Erin Babnik - On Landscape Meeting of Minds Conference 2016

[Applause] [Music] okay um given my background in art history I've had a number of people here at the conference ask me if my talk will be at all art historical my interview in the current edition of the on landscape magazine is pretty much this talk however is not um really it's much more personal it's actually an adaptation of an article that I wrote for uh the photoc Cascadia blog that was one of my most popular articles it really seemed to resonate with people and what I decided to do um actually for a keynote speech that I gave at a previous convention was see if I could take these ideas and um marry them with um a lot more of my own personal experiences and that went over extremely well so I've adapted it yet again um today and I'm very um excited to be able to kind of present to you uh an overview of my work through the lens of uh these uh life lessons that have really informed my work over the years not only as a photographer but much much before that also as um as a painter as a graphic designer uh as an art historian and an archaeologist because yes those are actually creative Pursuits as well and what I've been able to do is um look through all of the wonderful bits of advice has received wisdom that has helped me to kind of stand course when I felt like I was in those darker moments of the creative process and i' I've picked out the ones that have most resonated with me and that have been the most helpful and I think they I hope um can be helpful to other people but they also I think say a lot about where I'm coming from with my work uh and maybe a little bit about where I'm going we'll see so I just want to start off with an image that for me at any rate sums up my happy place uh I am essentially a an Alpine photographer a so-called Adventure landscape photographer I spent a lot of times time in the mountains and I grew up in the mountains and that's where I feel most at home and this Photograph to me really represents what it is for me um that keeps me going keeps me in the mountains keeps me photographing them and that is that sense of awe of course um but also there's something about just having a wonderful atmosphere around the the way that it it it's always changing and moving it's exciting um the sense of remoteness I really enjoy I love that when I go to a lot of these places um I tend to be the only one around or else it's just me and whoever else has come with me and I of course love when there's great light and everything just comes together and I can really concentrate and really feel as though I'm really being U me and that I'm able to be creative and ideas are just flowing and I'm engaged and I'm in the zone and that is an awesome feeling and uh and really there's nothing else like it and those are the moments I think that keep us going and and that's really when it's all easy it's easy to be yourself and to um tap into what it is that is Meaningful to you and important in your ideas um when when you're in that kind of frame of mind you know sometimes everything just goes really well for example this time when I was out in the Mojave Desert and uh this rainbow came out and just stuck around for about an hour you know rain bows aren't supposed to do that right they're the thing that you're supposed to dash off to catch because you see it in exactly the wrong place and it's all you can do to get there and right when you do and you get set up of course it's faded and it's gone that's just how rainbows work but this time no now that rainbow came out um and I'll be showing you a picture later when I was actually shooting a composition that I already liked and then this rainbow this one just dropped right down into it the left end of it perfectly in my frame I just are you kidding me uh and it just stuck around for at least an hour and I'm scrambling around thinking it's going to die at any point and it just didn't and I actually had time to remember oh I'd seen these really cool arcing forms um in this other pla quite a ways from where I was and so I went running over there to see if I could align them with the rainbow and the rainbow's like it's not it's all right I'll wait and it just hung out there and I got there and and and it worked it worked perfectly the rainbow is pretty much in the you know exactly the the right spot to um finish off this composition and then it continued to stick around and it came back you know they move throughout the day as the sun moves but it got to the point where my friend who was with me was saying can someone just get that rainbow out of my shot it's kind of in the way just had enough of rainbows but it was great so that's when everything's really really easy right and then there are the other times when it's just not when things just aren't going really well like when you're out in the desert for a week primitive camping and it's really hot and you haven't seen a cloud in about a week and probably haven't had a shower in about that long either and you have all these motivations these ideas things you want to do that depend on certain conditions maybe it's not Skies not everyone's into great Skies but there are always conditions that can make or break an idea and uh you know sometimes that can really weigh on you and get you down and it can distract from that creative process of seeing you can get so focused on something that you really want and when you don't find it these these can become real um uh drawbacks to the to the whole um process of of coming away with something that you feel is personally satisfying and ultimately I believe that is the most important goal really for me at any rate and I think it probably should be for most photographers is that ultimately what you want to produce is something that's person Al satisfying but lots of things can get in the way and it's not just these sorts of um unfortunate circumstances or difficult um experiences there are external factors that can be distractions to the creative process as well things that can get in the way of you connecting with yourself and and staying on course social media uh is increasingly becoming a big one for photographers especially for those of us for whom large part of our income kind of depends upon um being able to reach people through social media I teach a lot of workshops and so I I need to put myself out there on social media uh it's sort of a necessary evil and it can be a real distraction uh I I've had a lot of people tell me that you know they are really sort of uh an anxious about social media because they feel as though not only that they want to do well and they want to reach people but also that now it in to some extent has turned photography into a sort of sport because everything's measurable now you know that photo is better than that one you know this is my best photo according to the world um and that all of that diverts attention away from what you really care about what which is your favorite photo um and that sort of thing when you have the world constantly judging in such measure meble ways um it can be really distracting it can get you off course and get you thinking about well maybe I should be going more in that direction because um that's where the rewards are uh and that can be that can be that can be tricky another another one is just the whole realm of professional activity for any photographers who um make their living this way uh there you know you've got you've got uh the websites to selling the workshops to selling the prints to setting up an exhibition or whatever it is and it can be very easy to sort of work towards those goals rather than coming from a space of um outward inward out uh you you can reverse that process by trying to take things from the outside and sort of make them fit inside somehow and that doesn't always work and so professional considerations um Contex tests or another one I I haven't entered a contest in a really long time but I do judge them a lot and I recently judged um the uh Epson International Panel Awards and I had a surprising number of people contact me with these anxious questions about how they could do well in the contest I thought that's really unfortunate because um you know I mean I I don't necessarily um I mean I fully understand that that that range of concerns and I fully understand why someone want to be in a contest and I think they're great and they they actually have their benefits for creativity they can be a way of really motivating uh an artist to do whatever it is that they do so long as that's what it is it's it's it's a good thing if it pulls you away from whatever it is that you do not so much other distractions might include just basic practical considerations um safety is a big one for me since I work in the wilderness a lot about just over a year ago I actually went through a certification course to become a Wilderness first responder and this was about 90 hours of study and training and uh that which is just enough time really to introduce you to pretty much every possible way that someone can have a really bad day in nature um I mean these are and these are these weren't things that necessarily were new to me um but you know once you're exposed to the the the incredible number of ways that someone can uh have something really horrible or painful or debilitating or even fatal occur to them can really kind of pile up in your mind and make you think about that uh a lot more than um maybe more creative concerns this is a picture of me uh bre stocking my medical kit not all of that goes into it but I just had everything out and I thought well that's interesting and that this is actually aspect of Photography that you have to go through this and and when you do put it all together you know it really makes this the these possibilities very real sometimes that's good uh of course it's it's good to be safe um sometimes it can have the the side effect of bringing about more kind of rational ideas uh and and those can be problematic this is an image of mine that I uh created recently uh in Death Valley and on this particular day I was doing something that I really loved to do I was out by myself uh and I had seen that these uh amazing wind storms were coming and because I love photographing blowing sand on dunes and I'd done it a bunch at this point it was and it's just become one of my favorite um most exhilarating experiences I wanted to do it again I had some more ideas I wanted to work with and I uh I made a plan to come out and timed it perfectly got there when the winds were howling I couldn't barely stand up as I was walking i' I've forgotten how fast the wind was gale force winds and I got out there and I started taking pictures and uh I was really having a great time uh no one around of course because only crazy photographers would even want to be out in those sorts of conditions they're not they're actually not dangerous despite everything I've just said being out in that kind of win on the sand if you know what you're doing you can you can uh just go out there and have a nice time so I wasn't uh concerned about safety I knew I was I was just fine well prepared for what I was doing uh and then things started to get a little weird um so I was out there and I photographed this image which um doesn't doesn't feature the the blowing sand the wind had kind of died down in my area at that point but it's turned out to be one of my uh favorite images and it also reminds me of not only what I was able to accomplish by being lured out there by a motivation and then finding another one this isn't something I could ever have planned for that the clouds would come down and and practically kiss the top of this Dune no way was I planning on this this was not my idea not what what I was out there to do I did that first with the ideas that I did have and then this moment came along so this this image kind of represents that that successful moment of me being able to be creative in the The Zone thinking seeing and responding um but also what happened right after this uh I so I was out there shooting and I went a little bit further out on the dunes and I was having a great time uh watching these amazing storm clouds come in and um there was all of this sand swirling around in the in the foreground it almost looked like like a sand tsunami and there are these these Dirt Devil dust devils that um are pretty common in Death Valley and i' I'd seen those lot so I was kind of fascinated with it and I knew that that wasn't going to take me off to Kansas like Dorothy or anything they're they're they're pretty they're pretty okay if they come close it's not too bad so I um I uh I went over closer to it because I wanted to photograph it some more and all of a sudden poof everything went white I mean the whole everywhere the whole world to me just suddenly turned white and that freaked me out I didn't really understand what was going on in retrospect I realized it was a cloud inversion the clouds having come this slow just finished the job and came all the way down so now I was inside the clouds and my first response was oh my gosh the sun had been completely snuffed out at this point I was thinking wow I'm in some kind of cyclone or something I wasn't thinking rationally and so I decided Well it's time to evacuate um and I think because I just finished that woer course the first responder course I had all of these sort of irrational ideas in my mind and the most logical uh explanation hadn't really occurred to me which was that the clouds had just dropped down I was thinking about the worst case scenario this Cyclone of sand coming at me and carrying me off so uh what I did is I um instead of uh staying around and photographing what could have been some really unique conditions I I got out of there and and in retrospect I look back and think wow the these this is very unusual and as I was exiting the the the Dune area it was about a mile out I was seeing these really great rep repeating forms of Dunes going off into the distant fog how often do you see that very very rare um I've maybe seen one or two pictures ever of of that and that would have been really fun if I could have just stayed in the mind frame that I had been in I might have yet another um image that that I really enjoy so what I'm going to go through now are the five points these five points that I've been able to pick out over the course of my education starting from art school now a lot of this stuff is like I said received wisdom these are the sorts of things that address issues that most creative people face and so art Educators tend to focus on them and none of this a lot of this will probably seem like a common sense um it's not necessarily um these aren't secret points or anything and not certainly nothing that I came up with and it's probably the sort of these are the sorts of um uh lessons in life that I think everyone at some point really understands and knows and takes to heart um but I I like putting them together and kind of putting a focus on them um because I think these are the most important ones for me at any rate the ones that have had the biggest effect on uh what I'm doing now the first of these is to remember to have fun uh and it's probably the most important as far as I'm concerned I think that is the most important part of uh getting to that space where you are really being creatives because creativity is ultimately a playful process and if you start there um you're already in the zone it's great if you can do that if you can get yourself into that frame of mind now sometimes it's just easy to have fun everything goes well or you know just crazy things happen like on this occasion when I was shooting out in the dolomites uh I was with a workshop at this point and uh we were out there shooting a Sunset and here comes this pink balloon flying over and it stops right over us and just drops straight down now we're out in the middle of nowhere we are at a about uh 7,500 ft in elevation um quite a ways we've hiked in this is a backpacking Workshop we're nowhere near civilization so this this balloon comes down it drops right down into this World War I trench and uh I went over to retrieve it and it had this note on it and it said uh our birthday kid uh has just turned 75 and would like nothing more than to receive cards from all over so how fun is that we thought you know this this is really great and it really put us all in a great moon I I tied that little pink balloon to my backpack and I walked around with it following me around everywhere and these are the sorts of things that buoy a whole moment and everybody was in a a really great mood after that uh and uh you know that's when it's all it's all really easy I'll never forget when I learned this this particular lesson that you need to have fun because sometimes you do need to kind of consciously go back to it and this experience is the one that brought it forward for me for those occasions when it's not like this the pink balloon doesn't just land and let you know that it's time to have fun and I'm just as a standin for my experience was was actually an art school in a classroom during one of these really uh serious critiques this this image is um just a behind the scenes shot of me working with some Workshop participants uh in the field just reviewing stuff in the backs of LCDs because they asked me to uh so this is just going to stand in for that critique process although this process is much more fun than the way it goes in art school anybody who's been in art school probably knows how how just uh stressful it can be when you have to go into a classroom and you pin all of your uh artworks up on the wall and everybody in the class has their picture up there and Along Comes the professor and he peruses these images and he will then hold forth and uh let you know exactly what he thinks about them and then there's a discussion and the time when this this idea of uh having fun really came forward for me was was in one of these critiques when uh the professor was someone I respected greatly he was one of these guys who's in all the history books really loved his work of course he really wanted to please him so that put the emphasis on him not on me when I was producing my piece for this critique and um you know there are other considerations as well when you're in art school everybody thinks oh this is your time to sort of cut loose and and be um you know be a student and you know produce your juvenalia and all of that it is to some extent but in my case I actually also had a scholarship that depended upon getting good grades so if it wasn't hard enough that you know I wanted to please this um this really great Professor I also had that concern that um you know I needed I needed a good grade and I know I I wasn't alone in this so the professor comes in this one day he looks at everything on the wall and he says everybody sit down pull up a chair come closer he didn't say anything about anything on the wall and he just looked at all of us and he said it looks to me as though you've all forgotten to have fun and that really hit home for me because he was right um I think we were just so concerned this is our first really big critique really so concerned about what he wanted or what was going to please him that we'd forgotten to go through that essential process that essential playful creative process that tends to produce good results sharing another image here just to get back on the idea of what's fun for me uh this is a behind the scenes photo taken by a friend of mine Michael Shane Blum uh when we were out in Death Valley again one of my other favorite areas for uh photography and we were out in this place that's called The Dot district and I love this kind of thing where um there is no obvious composition you have this uh this jigsaw puzzle of options there and you can just play with that all day and I I can do that for hours I love thinking through these the various foreground compositions that you can get out of these sorts of environments and when the light is nice and it's all and you're the only ones out there wonderful absolutely wonderful and again to return to the other side of things that trudging through the desert that process of scouting scouting scouting is just the opposite of that when you you know scouting actually becomes something that you feel like you have to do you're not seeing anymore at that point um and this this particular hike was miles across this this very difficult um this difficult terrain with some friends and I think it started in a great place we were all in a good mood having a good time shaking mud off our boots and everything thing was really messy and in the end it ended at a different place it got it got a little rough at the end and I think we were pretty down in that that image I showed previously of us back at Camp uh feeling a a little rundown uh followed this think that was the next morning so how do you turn it around um well sometimes um you do have to do it consciously this is an example of something that I think any landscape photographer has a really distinct motivation might understand well we tend to plan things a lot of us not all of us and I don't always uh but it is one way once you've been to a place a number of times you've developed a relationship with it you start to have pretty specific ideas about it sometimes and something you really want you saw a potent saw some potential for something and you want that well this is one of those places it's a an Alpine Lake in Slovenia where uh I had done quite a lot of Photography and at this uh on this particular day I wanted to hike up to this Lake um and shoot um a mount Mountain scene in the opposite direction from the ones that I'd done before I had done this before and I had done it before in winter and it it's usually a snowshoe hike up about 2700 ft in elevation so it's it's not super simple um but it's something you can do we can get up there in a day in winter so I was really excited about going up there and having all this great snow and really cool conditions and and and everything all my research for the weather and everything had shown me that this was going to be a possibility so I was excited um and here's here's a better view this is all from Google Earth of of that lake so there it is and that that's the mountain um that I hadn't shot I hadn't shot in that direction that's the mountain that gives the lake its name so I kind of wanted to work with that I had an idea of something I wanted to do and I was pretty uh determined to get up there and give it a shot but when I got up there uh there wasn't even any snow hardly I didn't need my snowshoes at all to get up there I had my crampons my I sacks I was ready to go and that just wasn't on offer so uh I got up there for and for a while I was thinking hm got all the way up here there isn't even any snow the trees are all dead this is in one of those sort of I call them the tweener periods when um you're kind of in between seasons and uh there was however one really amazing um uh condition to work with there and that was that the lake which freezes over every year this is a frost Hollow that gets very very cold the lake um this year didn't have any snow on top of the ice and that hadn't happened for 10 years so I was kind of having a nice time just sort of running around on my crampons and noticing all of these great bubbles in the in the sand uh in the ice and some of them were pretty impressive you can just see a few little ones here but some of them were really beautiful and um now bubbles are kind of a a favorite thing for landscape photographers too but but I wasn't expecting this at all um There Are Places lots of people that are go-to spots for shooting and bubbles with mountain that sort of thing is very common and I've seen some great bubble abstracts but I I had not that was not on the menu and so it wasn't something that I'd really thought about and I and I just allowed myself to let go of my my ideas I remember just just let's just have some fun with these this is really a a nice treat I'm actually I this is a gift I didn't get what I wanted but this is really great so I I really got into the bubbles and I just R went with it even though i' you know I'd hiked 2700t up uh in these these really kind of cold conditions to go shoot these little itty bitty bubbles so um it it's it it was something that I think in a different frame of mind I wouldn't have thought to do I wouldn't have wanted to do it would have been kind of uh depressed that I wasn't getting what I wanted because it's a lot of effort to get up there but I really got into it and I shot these bubbles wide I shot them long I shot them for days I shot them in flatlight I shot them in uh broad daylight and uh this is the actual setup for the final shot that the one that I produce that that uh I really liked it's a telephoto shot actually Focus stacked because in order to get all of the uh bubble cluster into Focus I had to take a whole bunch of exposures at different uh focal points and put them all together and so here's my my wonderful Lake shot with a Sunset and a mountain and a lake looks like that and this is not an image this now this is an image that I find personally satisfying I I really enjoy it I've called it frante because to me it looks like sort of a light sparkling wine and it's fun and it's bubbly and it represents that whole process of just going out and having fun and doing something um with the ephemera that is ultimately really meaningful I also um on the way up uh encountered some of the largest hor Frost crystals I'd ever seen in my life so that that that idea of having fun had already started before I started shooting the bubbles even and I produced some um some images that uh to this day I I still like that are um of those hor Frost crystals I'd seen a lot of really impressive ones even in the Canadian Rockies where there's a some you can get some pretty great examples of it but nothing like this these were huge uh and they were really fun to shoot so I had a lot of fun with those too another way that I go about having fun is um using my phone instead of my big camera and I know that a lot of people do this too uh and I think it's very recommendable um sometimes there's a certain amount of seriousness and weight literally that comes with using the big camera and it can help to kind of put that down for a while and for me at any rate just take the phone out and play with it and it's you know something about not only the fact that it's light and easy and portable and everything but just something that that divorces me from the seriousness of the real kit um I find really helpful so here I am out in the Mojave Desert on some of the largest mud tiles that I've ever seen in my life the cracks are big enough that I could fit my DSLR with its Ultra wide angle lens down in between them uh and this was uh really a great saw puzzle for me and took me a while to to sort it out but I ultimately came up with this image uh which I really liked and this is when I spoke about the rainbow dropping down into my scene uh that's what happened I I figured out this composition I practiced it for a couple of outings until this morning when I got the light and I even got the rainbow which I wasn't wasn't expecting at all just dropped right down in there uh so I don't know sometimes magical things happen when you're going out there and you just let yourself have fun another anecdote um that I think is relevant here um this is a trip that I recently took with my good friend Ted Gore we were out in the French Alps exploring one day just sort of um looking for whatever we wanted to find uh what might be out there and we didn't have any really set ideas about what we were doing or what we were looking for we were just looking just having fun was the idea but we weren't because we'd been we just had come from teaching a 10-day Workshop we were pretty rundown I'd actually been teaching workshops in the mountains all summer so I was really rund down and mountains are a big place and trying to explore them takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and uh I think we were really letting that wear on us and we'd gotten up to this point um with this lake that is quite charming and it's not even hard very hard to get to this point but we were already pretty exhausted this is only I don't know a couple hours of hiking to get up here and um really the mood for us was was pretty down and I I don't know what prompted us to do this I think maybe seeing this little Stone pathway across the lake is what did it because that was so fun for us and so unusual not something we were really expecting um but we thought let's just take some selfies this isn't something that we normally do some people specialize in this Instagram has a whole sort of Industry about that and I don't I don't tend to do that myself I rarely have figures in my shots at all but that's what we decided to do like let's you know let's take a break from this scouting mission for a while and let's just have some fun so we did that for a while and uh and it turned things around instantly uh just just snapped us out of that funk that we were in and what we ultimately did was um a lot of scouting that day may or may not have produced photos um we took some the next day but I think it was some really quality scouting I felt like we were really seeing and uh it's just a place we'll have to go back to and keep working it I'd like to go back at any rate and this process of having fun really got me to the point where I feel like I now know the place I have started that relationship and I'm ready ready to go back and and continue it sometimes having fun just means switching up a lens it can be that easy you know that can be the thing to switch you get you out of that funk I I've found this is a a photo um actually that I consider work in progress due to a horrible story that I'll spare you right now I've lost the lost the shot and was never really able to process it the way I wanted to um but I it's one of many that I've taken at this location this is a spot that I discovered years ago while scouting and I discovered this alignment of the Rising Sun with this particular um very handsome Peak but one day I decided to go up there and um try some telephoto stuff and this is I'm standing very close to the same spot I was actually teaching a private workshop at the point at that point and um the guy who had uh was my participant who was working with me was um by my side and he was actually shooting wide in that other direction and uh I so I was just poking around on my telephoto having a great time because he was all set up and fine he didn't need me anymore so I um I started uh looking around for fun stuff and sometimes fun stuff to me is not only uh me having fun or the things that happen or the conditions being fun sometimes for me it's seeing Whimsical instances of um dialogues going on between elements in a in a in a photo they amuse me they come to mind they may be only it may only be I who see them but uh in this case I I saw this this peak looking up from the distance like it was sort of photobombing the scene and I really liked that distant Peak and the way that it was sort of almost viewing over the top of its Ridge there and and looking back at uh the Mist coming in and swirling around this little Hill in the foreground and uh to me that was really really great fun and and I had a lot of time a really good time photographing this and this day I really um for me at any rate I'm very happy with the photograph I really love these kind of Misty quiet photos and uh it was really nice to be able to come away with one that day um this is another one this is out in the um Grand Staircase es galani National Monument area uh of the American southwest and uh what really Charmed me about this scene is the way that this be looks very much like a big shark fin cutting through the desert and to me that's really fun so I I loved that idea and it got me in that playful mood just thinking about that uh and I actually at the time I had just gone fulltime with my photography and uh this to me had all kinds of meaning too so kind of started to get really deep after the playful process I was thinking about you know I kind of feel like I'm in a way in in Prett I'm in I'm in the deep end here I hope this can work for me uh so the idea of sort of being circled by a shark you know was very real and it brought all of these um sort of vivid ideas to mind that I think helped me uh work through what I wanted to do with this location and I see these sorts of things all o all over uh in this case I saw this what looked to me the clouds were echoing the form of the mountain um this is what I refer to as an echo composition in my writing so I saw the the shape of the mountains looking very similar um to the mountain itself the shape of the clouds and uh I love the way that it was sort of like the Spectre looming up like uh you know trying to be scary behind the mountain almost trying to maybe even um uh mimic it like a doubleganger back there and I thought that was really fun and and these sorts of instances really helped me to if I just sort of run with those ideas mentally uh they keep me keep me going keep me away from all of those other distractions that might be Weighing on me I stay focused on that a last example uh this is again out in Death Valley and on this particular occasion I was uh teaching a workshop uh with my coer Ted and we had brought this this group out onto the dunes and it's a pretty good March out there you go about at least a mile a mile and a half to where the spots that we like are and um we had a fantastic fantastic outing uh we tend these are sort of weather chasing workshops that we do and people love that and so we'd gotten rainbows and sunsets and we had all the stuff that um a lot of landscape photographers are into the scenics really want to get and um we had a great time so everybody was feeling pretty good about what they got when the raindrops started falling and the storm started rolling in most of the participants were ready to go back um so Ted escorted them uh back off the dunes and one stuck around and he was um uh a 70-year-old participant a good old Carl Carl um despite his age would go anywhere if there was a good shot to be had there he wasn't real fast but Carl would get there he's the most enthusiastic uh participant I'd had in a long time and so he's out there and I saw him looking at the same thing I was looking at which were these wonderful storm clouds coming in they're just so shapely and so Moody and the blues and they completely change the whole color of the dunes they go from these warm Hues to this uh these Steely colors that I just um I I just love so I looked over at Carl and they said I could see he was sort of looking and I was looking and I just said Carl um do you want to stay and he looked at me and he said yeah I'm having fun so I I I you know can come up with a million different examples probably of ways that I have fun and I'm sure that others can come up with more this is one of the more silly instances of me just waiting before uh the light that I really wanted was coming and I just filled the time by um sort of um making good on a dare to do that so create create that video that was really fun and that definitely lifted my spirits that day too which had been a bit down before that my second point and and this is one that can often be misunderstood is to go big some people as I did misunderstand this point to be well you should go big with your prince or you should go shoot big mountains or you should go look for epicness or you should go really remote or you should just have a big idea and come up with a big idea and and do that um and that's not really what it's all about although I I believed that too you always hear this go big go big uh until I realize that it's it's it doesn't mean that it's not the size of the finished product or the size of the mountains the epicness of them or the grandness of the landscape that matters um it's the extent of your ambition if your passion is pointing you towards a particular motivation the idea is to ask yourself what is the fullest expression of that that idea and do that so essentially don't sell yourself short if and don't tell yourself you can't do it don't listen to those voices in your head that say well that would be very hard or that would be very expensive or um nobody would like that or whatever it is um don't stop short go go big my biggest project is kind of big on a lot of levels it does involve big mountains and Big scenes and a lot of hiking and all of that but I'm now going to show you um how that how that all came together for me and how it actually enabled me to make more personally satisfying images because I wasn't doing any of this because I thought I should or I ought to or because it's big and that would be impressive I was doing it because I gradually organically naturally evolved into a love for these sorts of environments and decided that well if I was going to take it to the level that I wanted to too I was going to have to do some certain things and that meant getting out into the the mountains getting higher going for a a bigger um approach than what I had already been doing where and I focused ultimately on the dolomites for this at the time this was about six and a half years ago I hadn't seen any photos of the dolomites I actually had trouble finding them this is back before the days when this is when social media was just sort of starting to get going and it was actually pretty hard to find digital photos online of the dolomites and the books that I could find it tended to be these Valley views and this is an early photo of mine um that uh was just that I went and I found this little church this uh at the time when I put it out this is early early days of social media I put it out on actually on 500 PX which at the time had just graduated from being a forum only to actually being a website and it was is my first photo ever uh to go viral and it's and it was at the time it may still be my most stolen photo too um so that's where I started I found this little church and uh at this time I hadn't seen any photos of it but now I've seen a lot I've actually seen ones that I like a lot better than mine but uh that that's that's a beautiful beautiful um area of the dolomites down in the valleys and everything but I was really curious about well what's higher up I wanted to get into the high mountains that I wasn't seeing so much in pictures aside from more telephoto shots from accessible manage points so I um I got a bunch of maps lots of maps and this was expensive and I didn't have a lot of money but that's what I did because I couldn't think of any other way to do it um so I bought I have I mean literally a huge box of maps and I just went through and what I had learned from my first outings there in the region I had a good sense of where the tree line generally was and what sorts of features might be photogenic uh and I went through uh all the maps and I put these little markers on them like that orange one there and I try to Target possibly um really rewarding areas for me and I had to do a lot of hiking that wasn't necessarily what I was used to so I also really got more into mountaineering through doing all of this and some of this stuff is actually kind of treacherous this isn't the sort of thing I do on my work shops but it was what I needed to do to get around there's a lot of these vif foradas um and there's a lot of scrambling uh you know there's a lot of a lot of heights involved and cliffs and I scampered all over the place for years and I found a lot of places that uh were great and a lot of places that just weren't and it was just a lot of work to get there so it was not necessarily a very productive use of time but I was having fun and it was great and I was really excited about exploring these areas on my own because I felt as though they weren't necessarily haunted by the ghosts of a million other photographers and I could actually hear my own voice there um some people are really good at tuning that out and for me it helps if I'm in a place where I can kind of uh think it through uh from myself on the first uh outing so uh these are all from a one particular hike but they stand in for the sorts of things that are necessary if you want to really get around really explore find out what's out there and what you can do um including um going to some more popular areas this was this is an area that I could find in photos and I fell in love with it instantly I really wanted to go do something of my own there and um started off with some summer shots ultimately got into winter this uh working winter shots there only just this last winter actually and this is a shot I ow this is behind the scenes photo of me taking a photo and I owe this one to my friend Ted Gore who took the picture of me uh and this this opens up uh as many photographers know a whole other um wonderful world of uh photography if you just sort of think about even a different U uh season you know sometimes that really can be going big too it means that you're having to do things that are pretty difficult so in this case that means getting on the snowshoes and the Hut that's closest to this massief was closed so we had to stay at the one that's about an hour hike away and it was uh a lot of elevation for for snowshoes Before Sunrise to get down for this Sunrise but you know that's what you got to do if you got an idea it's all good it feels great I got actually even got frostbit well while I frostnip while I was trying to um make this photo and it was difficult to stand up the wind was pushing me over that's why I would Crouch down like that sometimes it meant um you know getting up and doing a lot of these crazy hikes that I was just showing you Before Sunrise and then you know sleepily perching myself in the edge of some Cliff so that I could get something done and that's that photo there but I did find a lot of great stuff and it was really really rewarding so I was out there not letting myself say this is costing me a fortune I am wasting all of this time I only occasionally find anything that um really resonates with me um but I pushed on I persevered because it was something that was coming from within and I wanted to express that I wanted to go big with these ideas uh another one is this is one of my very early winter shots from the dolomites maybe four or five years ago uh and again a headlamp hike Before Sunrise um isn't necessarily easy but somehow it is if you're coming from that space of you just want to do what's the fullest expression of your idea you'll do it this also extends to I think processing um not everyone is into this they don't like putting in a whole lot of chair time I don't mind it I actually kind of enjoy it up to a point and I'm I'm fine with it in this case this is a focus stack of a lot of uh images and so if I get out there and I realize I've got fast moving weather I've got a foreground that's inches away from the the front element of My Lens I've got a background that I'd also like to be sharp I've got high dynamic range I've got a lot on my plate there if I want to produce a photo of that that's a lot of work but then you just have to get into that at least for me that mentality of I'm just going to do this I'm going to go big this is what I want this turned out to be one of my most popular shots it's an older one now but um you know it at the time immensely personally satisfying to finally get this thing done and and to uh have something that reminded me of everything that uh I had wanted to achieve and more uh this is another instance of uh an earlier shot this is an area a very famous Massie again this is the trade Chim lavaro Massie in the dolomites um it's if there's anything that can really be considered an icon in the dolomites it's this I think it can at this point when I first started going there I didn't even know that um and I because I didn't know that I also didn't know that the go-to vantage point is directly opposite this completely other way from uh where you start where you park and start hiking and where most people go is is um over by this other Hut where you can literally sit on the the porch and sip a cappuccino while you while you click away um because it has this really easy um view towards the mountains and for a long time that was almost um uh expected I think especially I've heard Italian photographers tell me that yeah well that's just the way you're supposed to do it that that's the way it's done you shoot from there uh I didn't know that at the time which is good so I went around the other way and um and at the time I'd never seen a shot of this uh stream now I have and now I take a lot of uh workshops here and so there loads of pictures of this stream but I love this stream and it was really fun to find it and to work with it and to figure out how I could put together um a story about the process of of the snow melt which is happening uh in a really dramatic way that year this is seasonal spring that doesn't exist all year long and this is that the picture from the one I was showing me of me on the snowshoes earlier this is what came out of that I really wanted to catch that process of um weathering this is what happens you know to these craggy mountains that makes them so fantastic that process of the weather kind of eating away at them and the snow blowing over the cugi was a shot that I had wanted for a long time because I had seen it I had tried and and had failed for various really sad reasons and and so I finally put something together just this winter that for me at any rate is immensely satisfying and and I'm happy I've got it but I had to go pretty big to get it this is another instance of a time when I really scampered around a lot and uh almost found nothing I often likened myself to uh the way that cats are with boxes you know if I see something on a topa map that's blank and there's nothing in there nowadays that's where I want to go you know I just want to find out what's inside that box and this is what I found this is an area that's uh pretty blank on the to maps not indicated as anything interesting and there's this really cool double waterfall there with this snaking stream and uh it was really exciting to find that again seasonal and I've never um I'd never seen anyone work with this and so I was able to kind of clear my head and have a great time with that uh but again a lot of scouting just because of that sort of mentality of this is my project now uh organically I've organically arrived at this this idea that I want to explore these is and by golly I'm going to do it uh another one very high up in the dolomites to this day I've never seen another photographer in this area that I didn't bring there myself and I've uh been able to produce a couple of my favorite photos from this area um because of that very mentality and now I this is one of the photos that uh participants most request that we that we this composition is one that most of my participants want to visit and see how how it actually looks uh and they like to shoot it so um now I'm I've been taking a lot of people there and that's immensely rewarding too I I really enjoy that show introducing these places to people uh this as well is one of those areas that's Outback and way far from anything that most people would ever go to uh it's one of my more Moody darker images and to me it sort of sums up the creative process in general that it is kind of a dark place a lot of the time and then in the distance you know there's that sort of that light that you're moving towards and that's the light within one other spot um that I really like and I've been working on a lot is um this little waterfall uh in the dolomites and again just came from poking around I actually have a video of how you get there it's not obvious at all so this is um me rock hopping along to get over there just just comes by I actually disc came up with the idea by being the other side of the stream a couple of years earlier and seeing that there were Cascades of some sort uh I didn't know that these were even there they're kind of tucked away went uh exploring there with my friend Ted again and we um came across this waterfall and I subsequently returned many times um to have a good time with with that it's really a fun place I really enjoy going there this is a picture of Ted standing on uh a rock this is an image that has a lot of um personal meaning for me it's not one that I've ever released and I may never um not sure it fits in my portfolio really but I'll have to think about that uh but at any rate it's one of these these things that to me summarizes this idea of going big because you're you're out there you're looking up at this idea sort of metaphorically speaking and you don't realize that you can get there it looks like there's this Chasm but you can get across you can get around you can get up there there's some way to do it you'll figure it out if you really want to and that's your motivation I think it's important that you do it and of course going big doesn't necessarily mean just uh going to the mountains it can mean getting in the water instead of standing on the beach it can mean getting out in the hot sun uh again another behind the- scenes photo that I that I owe to a friend um it can mean standing on uh you know standing out in really windy conditions and getting some sand in your clothes uh and not to mention your gear although there's ways to protect against that it can mean driving 50 mil down a dirt road um in a 4x4 and then hiking another two miles out just to catch a moonet um it can mean climbing higher getting up higher than you've been before it can mean exposing yourself to yes sometimes sort of dangerous conditions this is a standin for a previous visit uh when I trying to get a shot like this broke my ankle because I got too close to a train trap fell in it and uh learn the hard way that rocks absorb heat and you shouldn't get too close to them in the snow which brings me to my third Point find the Tipping Point and this one's very simple and I'll be able to go through it quickly it's related to the last one is that sometimes just going big isn't enough sometimes you have to go too far I've found I had an art instructor tell me once that in fact you'll know the point where you've gone far enough after you found the point where you've gone too far so basically push it and I think that that's kind of true for portfolios to even finished work sometimes you just do have to put them in that portfolio and you think maybe that's gone too far but I'm just going to let that sit there and see how this all fits together in the end and maybe at some point I'll say yeah that was too much but now I know and some examples of that in in landscape photography for me back to this shot um I shot this in all kinds of light once I found it I was really excited about ooh double waterfall snaking stream awesome and uh I tried really dramatic lights really you know brilliant sunsets and nothing quite just sort of brought together what I wanted with the circular composition and the subtlety of the of the of the tones and everything so I I really preferred this soft light so once I'd shot the super dramatic stuff I pulled back and I like this slightly more quiet uh version and sometimes a Tipping Point as well uh like like with the picture of me and the ocean is it enough to get to the side of the water or do you have to get in the water in your ugly waiters or do you have to trapes all over Dunes for two hours only to find that the place you started was really the best point after all and that's where the composition was yeah we did that and I owe this uh behind the scenes shot to a workshop participant really great shot love it um or in um in this situation where I tried my usual approach to making water more smooth for a long time before finally giving up and saying no I'm sapping this waterfall of its power um there was something about the water flying up into the air like that that to me Express the particular character of this this waterfall in a way that smoothing it out didn't I was just sapping it of its strength and it wasn't until I tried and tried and tried and realize that those slower shutter spin were going too far I pulled back and I got this raging kind of image of this the raw power of this waterfall in the French Alps and uh for me personally satisfying my uh third Point craftsmanship matters and this may self sound self-explanatory and it's related also to going big sometimes you just have to have to uh dive in and do something even though it may seem tedious um for me that has meant that such things as as returning to a composition again and again and again um that can be very tedious um and sometimes I don't like doing that at all I just want to shoot whatever first comes you whatever I see and and that has that also has actually more often than not that produces the best results but sometimes I see something and then I want to work it and work it and work it and this one took me a long time I did this comp probably three or four or five outings or something like that and the moon was all over the place after the first first um instance of course because the moon's never going to be there again until you go come back a month later so I came back a month later again a lot of driving a lot of uh hiking just to to get out there um but I made it work and to me that's part of the craft if that's your motivation and you want it to be a certain kind of lighting I wanted this moment where the ambient light was coming and the sun was rising over my shoulder the moon moon was just setting and this I had to nail that moment was very hard and so I just kept at it because that to me is part of the craft and uh I finally nailed this image again the focus stacking and all the processing I have a lot of these sorts of shots where you have a really high dynamic range um you have focus stacking um you have sunstars to clean up and um but I like them you know I really liked the way that the spokes of this tree echoed that that uh Sunstar and I really wanted that once I saw it and had the idea I just knew I've got to I got to just sort of roll up my sleeves and get it done uh and likewise with this one not easy to put that together you have all of that going on this is an example of when uh craftsmanship just involved simple gear I'd first shot this on my phone an iPhone which has pretty high resolution and actually for a lot of people that's that that does it you can do a lot with that and I could have I could have put this online and left it at that but I thought I I'm probably really going to want to print this I was really excited about it when I showed it on my phone to Workshop participants they went nuts and really loved it and they wanted to go shoot that that pla um so I actually went back with my phone and my big camera and it was like finding a needle in a hay stack but I found that comp again and I shot it um for real this is an example of one image that is probably the most technically difficult I've ever done and uh in interest of time I I'll I'll cut short the story on this but it was a lot to put a lot to shoot it technically and a lot to put it together um it is kind of um uh just for me uh the kind of uh craftmanship that really tries on me but um I got it done the last one uh and I think this is probably uh as important maybe as the first one or second to it and that is creativity is a messy place so the caveat to everything that I've just said is that creativity works in mysterious ways uh sometimes we arrive at Solutions without really understanding how we got there but we can still feel a sense of accomplishment uh when we do you know we've all heard of the happy accident well there's that too we should be able to take pride in things that somehow just worked out for us even though we can't quite explain why and sometimes the you know creativity is that it is really very chaotic and we don't really understand why we're doing the things that we're doing we just know that that's what we do and that's really important so anytime I've used the word should or I've said anything in this in this talk that sounds in any way prescriptive just dismiss that because in the end you have to just do what you do uh this this this one last story I would like to tell has to do with um a friend of mine who once confessed to me that he felt that um he was kind of disappointed in himself because he was instead of using his tripod a lot of the time he was just sort of leave it stuck to his bag would run off with his camera and shoot handheld and that meant having to take a whole lot of images sometimes and do a whole lot of uh processing to produce something ostensibly could have done a lot been done a lot more simply simpler um if he' just shot on a tripod but that spontaneity that he got out of running around like that enabled some really unique compositions enabled him to nail some moments of light and so these really ephemeral wonderful moments that um just cause his portfolio to Sparkle with a certain kind of it has a shimmer that wouldn't be there I don't think otherwise if he weren't doing that and that's just the way he works and he's also a great Craftsman and he's able to pull this all together in a way that looks like it was shot on a tripod um so it's really important to just keep in mind that you know sometimes it's best not to let that little voice in your head tell you that you're doing it wrong you know even when you're going against received wisdom that you truly re back so again this this desert image um is one of those for me that um I have to say well uh that rainbow dropped down into my frame again and in here that rainbow just sort of stuck around can I take credit for that um I don't know I brought myself out into this environment into this storm and I shot in those conditions um maybe I should allow myself to take some credit and in that sense it it emboldens you again with this one I like these kinds of echo compositions where I have the the repeating vshape um can I take credit for that the that the the atmosphere just happened to do a v on the left that echoed the one on the right not really but uh um I did recognize it I did appreciate it and it's something that I that I really respond to and that I find personally satisfying and another event when I somehow wandered down to found this scene when I wasn't even looking for it it was supposed to be shooting the other direction supposed to according to what I had set myself out to do and I found this scene that that I really enjoyed looking the other direction um I I I do I take credit for that either was totally accidental um maybe I should so in summary it's important to have fun number one really is number one this day I was having a great time sloshing through the water and my puddle stomper Stompers um getting out to these salt formations never expected that that's what I was going to go out there to do is to try to heroize this tiny little salt formation in this way I usually um actually have different uh ideas about composition entirely but this in this case this one all came together for me just because I was out there having a great time go big this is a small scene it's just a little little piece of mud the back of a canyon full of water I had to with a couple of my photo Cascadia teammates do a 10- m hike mostly through water just a few weeks ago to get this shot because we had this motivation when we first got in there we found these outstanding examples of dried mud and that just got us going and nothing was going to stop us we just kept going until we've found more and more and more and it was long grueling hike um through the water but uh we had a great time and found some wonderful um little vignette of nature like this um find the Tipping Point another example of where the dramatic light killed off all the colors it killed off the kind of subdued Dusty uh mood that I really enjoy about the desert I pulled back and and went with this which um I much prefer and lastly creativity is a messy place starts out that way and somehow in the end it all comes together so that's it and I hope that by keeping all of these ideas in mind um if if any of them resonate with you you'll be able to follow your own nose um even when you can't really see thank you hi welcome back to the Green Room I'm joined Now by Erin babnick who's just a uh I I don't know how to describe it Erin uh you wowed us was the most amazing uh Mountain shots really and I mean um not all Mountain shots but uh there were an awful lot of pictures in places where I would never dare to walk um have you always many people yeah yeah I mean you you talked about going big you talked about uh being driven uh what drives you to go to those points that their inaccess their very inaccessibility yeah you know it was gradual there was a time when I I couldn't have done that I actually had a bit of vertigo when I first started doing this and was was terrified of some of these places and now I've completely lost it right so that's the good news vertigo is something that you can just lose I and I did and now it may actually even be sort of a problem that I'm a little bit um less aware of dangers maybe than I should be even but now it doesn't bother me yeah cuz you were going along the V fata and in the dolomites and uh and uh kind of perched on edges that there's no way I would anywhere near um uh you talked about Tipping Point you talked about this notion of um going past the optimum and coming back and I and I know that's certainly something that um that I'm aware of uh in work and I think it's the way that you refine your your approach um but you but it's also the Tipping Point changes does it not oh I should think so yeah I should hope it every all of it keeps changing otherwise um you know become stagnant or something yeah so so the whole thing's Dynamic and how how would you characterize your progression from the early days of because you you know you started off as as an archaeologist somebody who was interested in in the environment you had an interest in in art history and all those kind of things but how would you how would you characterize your your change it's had I think I've gone through a couple of swings um I started off because of the archaeological photography doing something that had to be to some extent fairly illustrative and straightforward and then I started to get more and more um liberated with everything doing things that were um in some ways obscuring what it was that was maybe obvious or illustrative about a place and or in some places um really pushing the Aesthetics of an image in the processing or or even in the the way I was approaching um in things in the fields such that um they look kind of painterly or they they they in some small way reference the Maker's hand I don't want to be that present in my images and so or at least I don't now and so I've sort of pulled back from that yet again and so I think now I'm my images are getting quieter and so the Tipping Point for me has moved yeah so so going sort of referring back to to Simon norfolk's talk today he's talking about the sublime uh and and there was a there's a kind of there's an interesting cusp there it seems to me between the sublime and the spectacular uh uh which would you charact which side would you characterize your images on or is that an unfair question I like to think I lean towards the sublime myself the spectacular isn't what interests me so much I um coming out of my art history background I have a great respect for helenistic Greek sculpture which is known for its sort of profundity and and and it's theatricality which I'd say was just more on the spectacular sorts of things but also um that it has this um this sort of deep monumentality and this profoundness about it and and I think that's more at home in the sublime uh realm yeah and that is where really what resonates for me when I see images not it's not that superficial at least I think of the spectaculars being on some level kind of superficial to me it's much deeper than that so for instance the desert shots that you were shamed Death Valley shots and uh and and a number of other shots you're talking about process you're talking about uh with the wind blown sand across the cugi you're talking about well this is the process that that sculpts the mountains yeah yeah so you're trying to reference that sometimes sometimes that's what interests me I always have some kind of motivation um even if I don't I'm not really wholly aware of it while I'm in the field I'm I'm not going to say that I always have this very clear idea I don't you know it's it is a messy place uh you know but in the end when I decide and I'm in that curatorial process those ideas come to mind I'm like yeah that's why I want this one and I want to process this one I want to put that one out there it belongs in my portfolio for that reason but sometimes I do have those motivations very clearly there's a um uh there was a Critic Alan zrich I think his name was uh uh who was referencing CTI Breon you know the idea of the decisive moment and he said the decisive moment was when Caro Bron pointed at a negative and said print that one the editing process is is is the decisive moment I think I I would agree and and I think we make a lot of subconscious choices during the making of a photograph um in fact I think that for me I don't know if you you'd agree with this but for me the the photographs that seem most complete are quite often the ones that you just felt yes you made it and then afterwards you work through the process of of fine-tuning it or or choosing particular which particular frame absolutely agree yes agree completely that's a novel feeling for me we have we have a question for you from uh Briana wolf okay um hi Brian she would like uh you to describe your style and uh ancillary um Clause how do you explore new Styles in landscape photography how do I explore new Styles um well okay let's go back to describing my style I think we've just just done a pretty good job of that actually in talking about the sublime um but I also have I think coming from um a background that's really steeped in the Arts I have some very set ideas about composition and so I mentioned this in my talk but I do respond very much to um uh these these ideas of sort of discourse going on in the in the in the landscape I see mountains as in some way anthropomorphic I see them as in some way being in dialogue with other elements they're like abstract sculptures in a landscape and in that sense they have that monumentality about it and I think if there's one thing I probably lock on to the most in my images it is kind of that sense of monumentality even when I'm working on something that's not that Monumental like a little bit of mud yeah um to me there's something kind of profound about it uh and that's I think as far as I can go is just describe what's really at the heart of my style and that plays out both the composition and also in the the choice of are that I go to and all of that comes together and in my processing I try to bring that together what it is that I find about it that kind of resonates and hums on that kind of more I'm really glad that you described your style in that way because so many people describe style as um as about the graphic nature of the image is about choice of pallet um choice of forms choice of subject but you you are going to the heart of what style is and that is what concerns the individual photographer or artist I think so for me at any rate it is yeah I don't I don't think style is anything else it's stylism is something else when you see people aing away is stylized yeah but but if your if your images are truly speak to what what you're about then then that's where true style comes from I'm glad you agree we're quite in agreement today so so that's that that puts this this the ancillary clause in an interesting position doesn't it so how do you explore new styles I I mean I'm I'm going to posit no I'm going to let you answer that and then I'm going to posit something um yeah you explore yourself is the short answer to that I mean um I I don't although I we had a discussion yesterday about the idea of looking at other people's work and I am a great proponent of the idea that this is a healthy thing to do I think but that's one way of exploring Styles is look at a lot of Photography and if something catches catches you I mean just catches your eye it catches you to you want to in some way sort of work through that that's telling you something about yourself and I think it's a healthy thing to pursue it and work through it and if you stick with it and you just sort of go big on that eventually you will come out of that so that's how I feel style happens yeah okay I I think that's that's a good description anel Adams I think said um that he was never really very interested in uh in other people's photographs because if he'd like that he'd be making those kind of pictures so yeah he did well I'm paraphrasing but yeah more or less and I and I think that the only way you explore new Styles is is to find new things that interest you and that is that is about exploring yourself yeah yeah okay um I think we're going to have to uh wrap it up there because we've got a few more um bits and pieces to do but thank you very much very thoughtful um uh answers and very thoughtful uh talk thank you very much indeed than you David

Channel: On Landscape

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Keywords: +erin babnik, +landscape photography, +digital photography, +photography, +onlandscape

Id: 5flzcS-M4Ts

Length: 74min 53sec (4493 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017