Landscape photography during trekking: the why

I'm an enthusiastic amateur landscape/travel photographer. But videos or podcasts about landscape photography are often a little bewildering to me - they are all about scouting out photography locations, determining the best time to go there using all kind of apps, golden hour, arriving early, waiting for 'the good light' - and then, almost all of the time, the photographer in question ends up going home dissapointed because they didn't get that specific image they had in mind.

The way I generally do landscape photography is very different.

Looking out over Kentmere resevoir from a hiking trail in the Lake District, England.

When you're trekking, you can't just hang out for hours at every beautiful place - you'd never get anywhere! Returning to the same location is also often not possible. So instead, you have to work with the conditions and light you've got at that moment. An epic mountain scene in front of you, but a boring grey sky? Too bad. Let's try to find a nice photo none the less. Sometimes I manage to find something interesting to photograph, a lot of times I don't. But when I'm out in nature on a trekking, many hours a day, for let's say three weeks, there's a good chance I do find a lot of photos very much worth taking. And there's also a good chance I am somewhere beautiful when those really spectacular conditions - a colorful sunset, a rainbow, sunlight between stormclouds - do occur.

Alpenglow on Ama Dablam (6812m), a gorgeous mountain in the Everest region in Nepal.

Pursuing landscape photography has already given me so many things. It helped me look different at the world around me, be vastly more appreciative about landscape futures and skies and light. It has given me added motivation to go out in nature more often, also in my own flat country. It has given me something physical to share with friends and family that goes beyond the typical holiday snapshot - photographs that I feel are accurate representations of what it was like to be there, at that moment. 

Finally, it is just so satisfying to create something that did not exist before, and to hang it up on your wall to look at everyday. It a great feeling.

Sunbeams trough the trees in my own country, the Netherlands.

Are you an avid trekker that would like to seriously get into photography, but you're a bit lost about how to start? In my next blog, I'll share some tips about the how of landscape photography during trekking.