Look Behind You!!!!

One aspect of working the scene that Bill and I encourage our students to think about is to always be aware of your environment. As a landscape or nature photographer, you are photographing in athree dimensional world with 360 degrees of space around you.

So often we’ve seen photographers so intent on capturing the scene in front of them that they totally miss other nearby photo opportunities – including ones directly behind them.

Over the years, Bill and I have taken pairs of wonderful photos where the second was taken 180 degrees in the opposite direction from the scene we had planned on photographing.

Several years ago, Bill was photographing inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC in hopes of photographing the full statue of Abraham Lincoln without any people in the photo. He happened to turn around to see one of the most amazing sunrises we’ve ever photographed.

When we’re on a photo trip, Bill and I frequently spend the middle of the day scouting locations for future photo sessions. The light isn’t as good mid-day as it is early or late in the day – and it gives us a chance to plan our upcoming shoots. We try to find places where we can not only photograph the sunrise before the sun comes up, but also where we can photograph the wonderful golden light that occurs 180 degrees away from the sun shortly after the sun comes up (or shortly before the sun goes down). Some of our favorite spots are places where we can literally turn around and photograph something wonderful after the sun comes up over the horizon.

One of these spots is in Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. We frequently photograph one section of the marsh before the sun is up – and then turn around and photograph another section just after the sun rises.

At Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico we photographed a spectacular sunrise over the frozen pond. In one direction the sky was filled with intense shades of yellow and orange. In the opposite direction it was filled with soft shades of blue and pink.

The other reason to always be aware of your surroundings when photographing is you never know what might be coming up behind you. It could be a bear, a speeding car, or someone who’s not paying attention to what’s in front of them and is about to walk into you and your tripod.

Or it could just be a curious turkey vulture checking out your camera gear the way this one did while Bill was photographing a butterfly in the Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida.

Remembering to look behind you is just one of the landscape photography ideas we talk about in our workshops. If you’re interested in learning more, please join us for one of our workshops.

Are there any places you’ve found with great views in opposite directions? If there – let me know in the comments – I’m always looking for new places to photograph.