There are easy landscapes… There are difficult landscapes. Test yourself.

Taking pictures in Jasper National Park is what got me interested in photography. That was over thirty years ago.

How could you not get hooked? The scenery and trails were spectacular.  Jasper is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Back then, it was the same routine every weekend. Finish work on Friday.  Hop into the already loaded van and make the four hour drive to the park. Take a long hike into the back country. Take pictures.  Drive back to Edmonton on Sunday evening.

Photography aside the trips were great. There was a sense of exploration and discovery on each hike. There were so many new trails for me. So many unexplored places.

I sought out any kind of published material on Jasper to see what might have been photographed. I was curious to see what others had done in the park. There didn’t seem to be much at that time. Andy Russell’s,  The Rockies was probably the most representative of what was being done. A new up and comer, J.A. Kraulis was just getting noticed and he was head and shoulders better than most of the landscape shooters in Canada. I don’t think any of today’s popular Canadian shooters were being published at that time.

Most of the other photos I saw were postcard shots of the usual National Parks tourist traps.  Rundle, Lake Louse and Athabasca Falls. I think that is one reason why I am so turned off by these places. The shots were always plain and uninteresting. So flat. So unimaginative. When I thought of Lake Louise a bad postcard would come to mind.

I became totally absorbed in shooting Jasper. The photography quickly progressed from starting my shooting transparencies on a Canon Ftb to shooting with a wooden 4×5 field camera and then eventually the 8×10.

If I hadn’t seen shots of a place published, I had to make the trip out to the spot and get it on film. The newness of the landscape was my drug and I was hooked.

All the time, I was out taking pictures, I was learning. Shooting transparencies was very unforgiving. Over or under expose and money down the tube

I was very new to this and aside from a few coffee table books I had seen at the public library, there was really nobody to follow as a role model here in Canada.

Of course there were established landscape photographers but the ones I liked were mainly American.  Elliot Porter a young David Muench were the most inspiring of the bunch but their work was from a different part of the world. There wasn’t a direct connect with where I lived and shot.

I always found shooting in the mountains easy. The pictures were just waiting to be taken. You only had to frame it and expose the film. This was too easy. Something that I would later learn was a hindrance rather than a help.

With transparencies there was nothing you could do later to salvage a bad exposure. What you shot is what you got.  It forced you to be aware of the light. Today bad lighting can be easily helped on the computer. So, even though photography is easier to learn today than in the past, it also allows a new photographer to be very sloppy in their technique.

Shooting transparencies  forced you to be disciplined and aware of the light. I was a purist then. But with transparencies you had no choice. No burning. No dodging.

Through two years of photography  school, I made a point of not burning or dodging my photos. It was a habit that forced you to improve your shooting technique. Looking back, it was foolish but I can be stubborn about things.

Having been on both sides of the fence when it comes to manipulation, I have come to the conclusion that it is the final image that matters. I am no longer a purist who believes everything must be in camera. There are some who preach that to burn or dodge is to cheat. That is their game. You don’t need someone to set the rules for you. Don’t be bullied into believing that you have “failed” if you need to darken a sky a little.

Burn it. Dodge it. Use filters. The vision is yours. For anyone to say it’s not a valid shot if it is manipulated is living in a bubble.

After a couple of years of shooting in the Jasper, I found myself getting published had a book proposal. Coffee table books were becoming popular. There was money to be made by publishers.

How difficult could landscape photography be when this was all happening so fast? Or so I thought. It all happened so easily and so quickly.

In hindsight, my photos were okay. It was easy to be dazzled by the location rather than the photography. The reality is that almost any fool with an eye can take good pictures in the mountain parks. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Drag a large format camera to Amethyst Lake and you can’t fail. Again, it was the scenery that was impressive, not my photo skills.

Do the same thing on the prairies and you end up with a picture with a horizon running through the middle of it and thinking, “what was I looking at?” Don’t be fooled into thinking yourself a talented photographer if all you shoot are beautiful places. It takes very little talent to come away with a nice photo. Offhand I can think of very few people who have done justice to the Canadian Rockies and one of them doesn’t even live in Canada.

If you wish to grow, challenge yourself. Great photos are waiting to be made almost everywhere. The two most important ingredients are the light and the weather.

The reality is that around Edmonton or for that matter anywhere in Alberta there are great pictures to be had. You really have to work hard to get them. But the rewards both in the kinds of images you end up with and the improvement of your photography skill will be accelerated. In my books one extraordinary photo of the flatlands of Alberta equals ten great shots of the mountains. The difference is that great in my opinion.

The next time you see a gallery of beautiful landscapes taken in a beautiful location, take them with a grain of salt. The photographer is only partly responsible for their magnificence.  The photographers work that really impresses me are the shots taken in normal places. A great photographer can make the ordinary look extraordinary. Imagine what they can do in an extraordinary place?

Practice your craft in the less than spectacular landscapes in your part of the world. Work to get your shot. Don’t let it be handed to you on a platter.

Refine your vision.

Most shots that I see today of Rundle and Lake Louise are just plain bad. I can think of only a couple of photographers who have taken that place to the next level. My hat is tipped to them.

For all the rest, practice makes perfect.

Happy shooting,

Dan

~ by Dan Jurak on April 1, 2009.