We’re often driven to explore the far away, the exotic because it can be hard to look at your everyday surroundings with the eyes of someone who has not experienced the area before. Those awesome views, one only seems to experience the first few times you set your eyes on them.
I’m very fortunate to live in an area of Europe that offers an absolute smorgasbord of photographic motives for landscape, architecture, street, “travel” and nature photography. Nevertheless, I also seem to spend more time searching for the far away instead of taking a closer look at what’s right in front of my nose.
To break this attitude of only longing for ‘the other side of the hedge’, I make it a point to explore my immediate surroundings (which I define as 30 minutes maximum ground travel time) and to not let weather or any other excuse get in the way.
For one of those trips I remembered to take my little gimbal cam along and document how even a simple scouting trip with a bad outlook, can quickly turn into a great adventure with amazing light and motives. (The adventure part I did not capture in the video below, since the earth opening up below my feet made me prioritize my getting away over capturing a big hole opening up in the ground – one of those sinkholes is actually visible at 1:10 on the right hand side of the trees and bushes).
Although there are plenty of wonderful tools out there for planning your outdoor photography trips, the best way to evaluate a location for a shoot is to go there, with your camera and use your own eyes to figure out what appeals most. To make sure I don’t miss anything too obvious, I also check the usual hiking and mapping apps to see what’s around my destination. I then create a route and some waypoints and off I go. No excuses!
I expected nothing from this trip but I did actually get a few shots that sell pretty well (even though I’m personally not a big fan of HDR composites).
So, get out there, even if it’s just your backyard and see what you can get!
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