If you’re not currently into landscape photography, maybe it’s worth considering it. Here are 5 reasons why you should take up landscape photography:
1. It gets you outdoors
It’s pretty difficult to take amazing landscape photos from your lounge, so chances are you will have to venture outside in order to get some decent shots. If you’re the type of person that already enjoys the great outdoors then good for you, but a lot of people (such as myself before I got the landscape photography bug) need a bit of motivation.
There is plenty of scientific evidence for the benefits of being outdoors, such as:
– Being outdoors boosts your energy
– The outdoors boosts your immune system
– Being outdoors gives you your daily dose of vitamin D
– It feels easier to exercise outdoors
2. Landscape photography is easy
As much as I hate to admit it, anyone can take beautiful photos. You don’t need the latest or greatest camera, even a smartphone these days can take amazing photos. You don’t need tripods or filters for most shots. Sure it helps to be somewhere photogenic, but if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere like New Zealand then you don’t have to go far for that either.
So there’s no real barrier to entry, you don’t need to make any real investment to make a start. Warning: once you get hooked, you might find yourself with GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), a common affliction with landscape photographers.
3. Landscape photography is hard
No I’m not contradicting myself. Well I am, kind of. Landscape photography is one of those activities that’s easy to learn, but hard to master.
You can usually get a pretty good photo out of the camera, but most photographers will do some sort of post-processing and will therefore need to learn to use software such as Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop. That in itself opens up a whole new world – you can just learn the basics, or get into the real advanced stuff.
You can always improve your compositions, even if it’s in subtle ways. When I look back at some of my earlier photos, I can see minor things that I might do differently today.
Mastering the use of your camera can take a bit of time. While you might start in automatic mode, you’ll need to learn about things like ISO, aperture, shutter speed in order to take control and shoot in manual mode.
All of this provides a challenge that you can tackle bit-by-bit, and just keep on improving your skills while still having fun.
4. Benefits of having a hobby
There are benefits to having any hobby, such as:
– Forcing you to take time for yourself
Hobbies force you to take a break from your day-to-day stresses and carve out time to devote to yourself. And the more time you devote to become immersed in your hobby, the more satisfaction and sense of achievement you can get out of it.
– Providing a way to declutter your mind
Hobbies can keep you in the moment, taking your mind away from stressful thoughts and focusing on an activity you enjoy.
– Hobbies can open up your world
Hobbies can encourage you to stretch the limits of your imagination, see the world in a new way (this is especially true for landscape photography). They can also put you in touch with a completely new community of people, allowing you to broaden your experiences and network.
5. You can make money from landscape photography
Okay this one is true, but not everyone is lucky enough to benefit from it. If your photos are good enough, you might be able to sell some prints. If you’re the type of person that likes to teach, providing tuition or workshops for other photographers is a good way to get some income.
It’s a crowded market out there though – with landscape photography being such a popular hobby these days, there are lots of extremely talented people out there offering the same things. The way I think of it is, if I’m lucky enough to sell some prints then it’s a bonus, but it’s not the reason I do landscape photography.
I hope the above reasons have given you some food for thought. You can read about why I do landscape photography here.
