One may feel that the best of photographic artworks have been impulsively wrought. But a seasoned photographer mustn’t undermine the value of patience. A photographer should wait; wait as long as it takes for good things to come his way.
The reason I stress on Patience as a discipline and a value to be inculcated by landscape photographers across the world are the fluctuating factors like the weather, season, time, etc that influence our photographic compositions.
There are times you may have to return to the same old spot time and again to capture the best shot it has to offer, even if under the rarest of conditions.
You’d want to get your angles and lighting right. It is a value acquired after a period of experience. In the last decade or so landscape photography has witnessed a digitalized revolution which puts a lot of issues in this avenue to rest. You can tinker around with a lot of added effects not just on Photoshop but on your camera itself. But that doesn’t eliminate the need of dollops of patience in your workflow.
It is especially essential when you fix on a specific composition or elemental requirements.
Take for example a situation where landscape photographers require being patient:
When you intend on capturing cloudy sceneries: Clouds won’t automatically appear at your service. They act on their own accord and you’ll have to wait for them to make an appearance and once they do make sure you’re prepared. Work out the element of balance in your frame to neutralize the prominence of the dull tones.
Lighting is probably the most dominant element that characterizes your landscape photography. The lights in the sky, reflected off the horizon or various surfaces, the time on your clock, changing angles, the weather, etc give your landscape frame a definition. You can’t always time yourself to achieve perfection. You have to be prepared well before hand to seize an abstract opportunity which has an element of surprise embedded within. This enhances the quality of your photographic artwork by dimensions if nothing else.
It takes a bit of patience to tune your camera and yourself to achieve that perfect shot. You may have to click a gazillion shots to get that one prized picture right.
Patience, my dear is what you need to master the art that gives a landscape photographer his identity.
