What I have learned taking pictures around the world

I spent the last year traveling around the world and taking pictures. As the landscape and, especially long-exposure photography is not the rushy genre, it gives some time to think and reflex. You hike to a location; you wait there, you go back… So plenty of time. And here are some of the things I have learned during this period. They are not supposed to teach you; they are mostly here to not be forgotten by myself. But maybe they will be interesting to you as well.

1. If you see the picture, take it!

I had a lot of moments when I saw a location, I saw something that I wanted to capture, but I didn’t. I thought, it was not the perfect light, or I don’t have enough energy, or something else. I thought, it’s ok, I will come back later and take it. But the truth is the moment is unique. I could come and take a better photo, I could not come and take nothing. But I could not take a photo that I saw at that point of time. If you missed the moment, you could not repeat it.

2. If you did not take a picture, it’s ok.

Before my trip, I had a severe syndrome of not a captured sunset. I couldn’t see a sunset and not taking a picture of it. I was running around trying to find the best location. And honestly the percentage of good photos was not good, but a stress level was high! At one evening I was standing on a beach somewhere in Malaysia, and the sun was coming down, and I started to understand the marvelous sunset is going to happen right now! And all that I had just a phone. I took a few mobile photos and was staring at firing skies. I vividly remember this moment, because that sunset is still the most marvelous in my life. And what I remember besides that is the peaceful feeling. The syndrome is gone. I was standing there, hugging my wife and watching that spectacular sunset.

The point is that sometimes you can’t make what you want and it’s ok. But it’s not ok to worry about that. If you get it as is and stop worrying about missed moments, you will decrease your stress level drastically! And it worths any photo!

3. You don’t control the weather, and nether it controls you.

When I was in New Zealand, I planned several iconic locations to take pictures. I expect a lot, I wanted to capture a lot of cool photos. And probably just a few of them fit my expectations. All others played the beautiful game “I know what you want and screw you!” If you know something about landscape photography, so you know how the sky and light conditions matter. So the weather played well. The conditions were too bad or too good. I couldn’t get something in the middle. But thanks God I figured out the second knowledge of this list. So I started to enjoy the moment. I was taking pictures, I was enjoying any weather, and I appreciated the ability to be there, to be in New Zealand, to take photos around the World! I stopped to be disappointed by the weather. I couldn’t control it, but it ended to control me too.

There are a lot of things in our lives what we can’t control. But we allow them to control us. What people think about us, external recognition, social likes. It doesn’t matter. Nobody and nothing should control you.

4. Photography is not about the result, it’s about the infinite way.

In 2011 I took one of the best photos in my career. It won a lot of competitions and brought some recognition to me. It was cool. And since that, I was trying to achieve something similar. And I failed. I was taking a ton of photos, some of them I thought much better that one, but I couldn’t achieve something similar like that photo, speaking of the external recognition. Whenever I was shooting on a location, I was thinking about it. I thought, yes, this one is going my new best photo. And the more I was obsessed about it, the worse pictures I got. I even took a break during my trip and shot nothing. I skipped several countries and was reflexing about the situation. Finally, I figured out if I want to have photography as a part of my life I should stop worrying about each photo and live by photography.

Our lives are ways in the first place and the result in the second. If we want to achieve something spectacular we have to accept the way. We have to love the process. Landscape photography is much about the process. And the process is not always pleasant. Long hikes, uncomfortable conditions, heavy backpacks, cold water. But I think about it as about a part of photography, and I love it. All these moments, which make me uncomfortable, recall me that I am alive. If I feel it, I still live. And it’s vital.

5. Landscape photography is about uncertainty.

Probably this bullet combines all the bullets above. When I come to the location I can plan the picture, I can be prepared, but I cannot be 100% sure I will get the shot that I want. And only recently I started to accept it. I was trying to control everything, but I couldn’t control uncontrollable things. And there are a bunch of them — starting from the weather and ending a broken car. But the good thing is the element of surprise. I remember the case in New Zealand when I was driving through the storm to Milford Sound, and the weather was so crazy, it’s hard to describe. But when I come to the location, rain started to calm down, clouds were moving away, and finally, the skies became clear. Too clear, I can say. So clear that I thought I couldn’t get something interesting. But I was shooting, just in case. When I came home, I even hadn’t looked at the photos. But several days ago when I decided to see what I shot, I figured out I took quite lovely pictures.

So what am I trying to say? Uncertainty is ok. Because our lives are uncertain, we would like to control everything, but we can’t. We can master our skills, we can calm down our demons, but there is always an element of surprise in a good or a bad way. And to accept is under our control. It’s the point. And it’s the most important lesson of the whole trip that I surprisedly learned through photography.