The Landscape Photograph

The regular, expected reason for landscape photography is decor. A large print on a wall, a pretty picture on a web page, something to enhance a brochure. It’s what my wife is most interested in, seeking beauty in her house, enhancing her walls, putting a piece of me in her decor. “Get me a fantastic fall leaf photo,” she said as I carried my camera and tripod out the door on this October day in 2025.

That’s not my reason.

I photograph the landscape reaching for answers. The therapy of dirt trails, distance, solitude, fresh air, heat, cold, wind, smells. I live for this variety.

I photograph for the pleasure of my cameras. Their whirring gears, the smell of sheet film and the obedient, patient wooden frame of my view camera. Also the modern marvel of a sensor in my digital camera, the way it vaporizes the scene before it into millions of tiny dots.

I photograph to release creative energy. To see my surroundings deeply. To get away from the stress of life, ever present stress.

I photograph to grow this portfolio, to have a thing I can look back on and say, “There it is, I did that.”

That fall day I came home with a fantastic fall leaf photo. I made her the print. It hangs in the house now, doing exactly what she wanted it to do.