Permission To Suck

Twilight on Ice, Glacier Lagoon, Iceland
ony α1
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
ISO 100
f/11
1 second

True story: I once had a Yosemite workshop participant meter an El Capitan reflection scene, put her Nikon D4 in continuous-frame mode, then press the shutter and spray in a 180 degree (10 FPS) arc until the image buffer filled. Unable to contain my dismay, I asked her what she was doing and she just shrugged and said (with a smile), “It’s Yosemite—there’s sure to be something good in there.” While I couldn’t really argue, I’m guessing she wasn’t seeing a lot of growth as a landscape photographer.

Thanks to today’s digital cameras’ ridiculous frame rates, seemingly infinite buffers and memory cards, and the ease of deleting images in the field, I’m afraid this spray-and-pray approach has become all to common. A landscape photographer’s goal shouldn’t merely be an occasionally good (or even great) image, it should also be continuous improvement. So, while spray-and-pray might render nice images from time to time, clicks without consideration also inhibit growth.

I tend to fall on the opposite end of the photography continuum. Rather than taking a high volume of low-effort images (spray-and-pray), my approach carries over from my film days. Back then, a photographer who wasn’t careful might return from a photo trip to find that, between the film and its eventual processing, the photographs cost more than the trip. With my wallet forcing me to be more discriminating, I took my time with every scene, checking (and double-checking) every composition and exposure variable, and only clicked when I was confident of success. Because basically, I couldn’t afford to suck.

Times have changed. Though many digital shooters have indeed become far too casual with each frame, following the conservative film-centric approach leaves shots, and opportunities to grow, on the table. To get the most from digital photography tremendous advantages, we also need to jettison the inclination to obsessive prudence in favor of curiosity and exploration.

Because here’s the new (digital) reality: While each film click cost us money, each digital click increases the return on our investment. In other words, since we’ve already invested in the capture medium (our camera), the more times we click the shutter, the lower the cost per click becomes. Transitioning from film to digital, the realization the not being constrained by budget means that every click doesn’t need to be a winner felt like a true epiphany.

The best approach for digital landscape shooters is a hybrid of the cautious film and nonchalant digital extremes: Careful attention to detail, combined with a no-fear freedom to fail frequently. For this to work, it’s essential to have some kind of plan or objective for every frame, but that objective doesn’t have to be a good image—it can be just as valuable to fail and learn. Feel free to explore without knowing exactly where you’re going or how you might get there—some of my most successful images happened only because I wasn’t afraid to start with crappy images, just to see where they led.

There’s a draft in here

As someone who has been writing and taking pictures for a long (long) time, I’ve found true similarities between the creation process for each craft. Whether it’s an important e-mail, a magazine article, a blog, or an epic novel, few writers sit down and create a polished piece of writing in a single pass. Instead, they start with a rough draft of their idea, then review, revise, and repeat until they’re satisfied.

For most writers, success requires being okay with making “bad” before making good. In her (wonderfully insightful and entertaining) book “Bird by Bird,” Anne Lamott encourages writers to embrace the “shitty first draft.” As a writer long inhibited by a fear to ever be less than perfect at anything, I found this permission to start “bad” very empowering. Until embracing this concept, not only had my creative growth been waylaid by my own internal editor, I’d been comparing my own early attempts to everyone else’s finished work (of course it won’t compete), forgetting that those writers almost certainly started with something crappy too. Now, when writing anything, I’m far more comfortable simply starting with an idea and seeing where it leads me.

This mindset is ideal for landscape photographers as well. We deal with mostly stationary subjects, which gives us the time to create at our own speed—clicking, reviewing, adjusting to our heart’s content—confident that our subject will still be there when we’re ready for the next click. Because there’s no financial penalty for each digital shutter click, the mindset can be that each click is simply a step toward a finished image—no matter how poor the prior image, there’s always an opportunity to improve it with the next one.

When I approach a scene and think there might be a shot in there somewhere, I don’t care how many clicks it takes, I’ll just keep clicking and refining until I’ve found something, or decided there’s nothing there. I start by composing my first click mostly by feel, without a lot of analysis. This is my first draft, a proof of concept that creates a foundation to build an image on. When that draft pops up on my camera’s LCD, I stand back and evaluate it, make adjustments, and click again, repeating as many times as necessary. And even when I think I finally have it, I might try a few more tweaks to see if I can make the image even more “perfect.” Would it surprise you to know that virtually every picture I share was not my first click of that scene?

This click without remorse approach also applies when I’m not certain there’s anything there at all. In those situations I might just play “what-if” games with my camera: What if I do this? Or that? If it triggers something, great; if it doesn’t, I move on—but maybe I’ve learned something in the process. And every time I find myself asking, “Should I do it this way or that way?,” I just do it both ways and decide later.

This personal permission to be bad is probably the single most important factor in my growth as a photographer.

One more thing…

I hear a lot of landscape photographers claim that stabilized bodies and lenses, combined with clean high-ISO sensors, have made the tripod obsolete. Since photography has to make you happy, I won’t argue with anyone who says using a tripod saps their joy. But…. If the joy you receive from landscape photography requires getting the best possible images, you really should be using a tripod.

Applying my draft/revise approach without a tripod is like drawing with an Etch A Sketch (is that still a thing?), then erasing the screen after each click. That’s because after every hand-held click, what’s the first thing you do? If you’re like most photographers, to review your image you drop the camera from your eye and extend it out in front of you to better view the LCD. Before you can make the inevitable adjustments to that hand-held capture, you must return the camera to your eye and completely recreate the original composition you just evaluated before making any adjustments. Using a tripod, the image you just reviewed is just sitting there in your viewfinder, waiting for the next revision.

Much the way a computer allows writers to save, review, and incrementally improve what they’ve written, a tripod holds your composition while you decide how to make it better. Shooting this way, each frame becomes an incremental improvement of the preceding frame.

Now, go forth and suck…

About this image

Twilight on Ice, Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

When this year’s Iceland workshop group arrived at Glacier Lagoon, it was pretty clear that we were in store for something special. The shadowless light and sweet pink and blue pastels opposite the sun make early pre-sunrise (or late post-sunset) twilight my favorite time of day to photograph—in Iceland it’s even better thanks to the incredibly long high latitude twilight. With the sun rising behind us in a little more than an hour, the clear sky and pristine air meant we’d have a front row view of the day’s first pink rays pushing the steely blue Earth’s shadow below the horizon.

Since we’d already visited here a couple of days earlier, everyone in the group knew their way around and instantly scattered when they saw what was coming. I didn’t go far, setting up with several others in the group along the lagoon bank, just below the parking area. I chose this spot largely because it allowed me to stay fairly close to many in the group, while still providing all of the elements I knew would make the morning special: clear view of the soon-to-be colorful sky, striking icebergs to draw the eye, and a reflective and textured foreground dotted with smaller ice features.

With so much going on from foreground to sky, I went with my 16-35 f/2.8 lens, which was already mounted on my Sony α1 body. I had little time to waste and quickly framed up a wide shot that included everything. Scrutinizing the result, I decided that I’d use the two largest icebergs to anchor my frame and repositioned myself accordingly. Then I just started clicking and reviewing, making slight refinements to find the right balance of sky and ice, and tweaking my polarizer to maximize the reflection color while reducing the glare on the closest ice.

True to high latitude form, this morning’s show stretched on luxuriously, enabling me to work the scene without feeling rushed. If I hadn’t been with a group I might have taken advantage of the slow motion sunrise and roamed a bit, but I was pretty content just staying put.

Join Don Smith and me in Iceland next year.

Frozen Sunrise, Kirkjufell, Iceland

Dawn’s Early Light, Mt. Whitney, Alabama Hills, California

Twilight on Ice, Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

Sweet Sunset, Lake Manly and Badwater Basin, Death Valley

Sunset Reflection, Half Dome and Mirror Lake, Yosemite

Winter Glow, El Capitan, Yosemite

Last Light, Cape Royal, Grand Canyon

Twilight Moon, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley

Glacial Twilight, Tasman Lake Reflection, New Zealand

Before the Sun, South Tufa, Mono Lake

Solitary Tree, McGee Creek, Eastern Sierra

Magenta Moonrise, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite

Reflection on the Rocks

Alpenglow, Nevada and Vernal Falls from Glacier Point, Yosemite

Early Morning Moonset, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley

Alpenglow, Kirkjufell, Iceland

Winter Twilight Moonrise, El Capitan and Half Dome, Yosemite

Winter Moon, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley

Three Strikes, Lightning and Rainbow from Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon

Twilight Fog, Tunnel View, Yosemite

Winter Twilight, Vestrahorn, Iceland

Before Sunrise, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, California