I was on a week long motorcycle trip in Montana. There was so much beauty to see, sometimes it felt like you could spend the whole day in a few mile radius and there would still be photos left to take!
It is a beautiful, majestic state and I certainly have a lot of images of the ‘Big Sky’ and mountains. One of my favorite images though, is one that captures a smaller detail in the landscape.
The guys I was riding with stopped along a stretch of open dirt road to take photos of some beautiful mountains, each of us taking turns. Some with the bike, some without.
While they took their photos, I turned around to take in the whole scene. As we were coming to the place where we stopped, I was particularly excited by a large patch of lovely yellow flowers. These are the details the guys I was riding with didn’t seem to pay much attention to.
This – one of my favorite photos from that trip – was part of that field of yellow flowers, behind a wood fence. I have some photos of the wide expanse of flowers but it was this. This close up of the fresh, bright yellow flowers against the soft brown fence, showing the weathering of time, this was the capture of the day for me.
I love texture, especially textures you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see together or think of. Like when you discover a pink flower growing out of a gray concrete wall or soft, green moss encircling a rusting metal cistern lid.
When I was learning photography in college, one of my professors often stressed this bit of wisdom: Frame the photo in the camera.
At the time we used film, so photos were much more precious simply because of the limit of a roll of film (and the cost). This required really leaning into the shot and paying close attention to the tiny viewfinder that gave you no immediate feedback in a manual camera. Using this framework, it saved a lot of work down the road and, even more importantly, made sure the photo was usable at all.
I still keep this in mind, whether I’m taking photos with a fancy camera or my phone, even though I get immediate feedback. I know sometimes the amount of time available to focus on a photo is brief (and sometimes too darn sunny to really see your phone clearly!). Even with the phone camera, I have been disappointed when I’ve gotten the photo home, loaded it up on a computer screen only to discover I’m missing an important detail that got cut off.
Since I don’t like to be disappointed by my photos, I do my best to take my time.
Taking time to frame the photo in the moment means slowing down, working through the different angles and framing (and, yes, possibly annoying your walking partner!). I think it’s so worth it, though, spending a little more time in the moment. Making photos this way feels much more satisfying than simply hoping I get the shot.
