I return to many of the same regions with my camera.
The Olympic Peninsula. Mount Rainier. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The rivers, forests, and rural landscapes of Southwest Washington.
But I rarely return to the exact spot where I made an earlier photograph.
I’m usually more interested in seeing what else is there.
That distinction is important to how I approach landscape photography. A familiar region doesn’t mean a familiar photograph. There are always roads I haven’t driven, trails I haven’t walked, creeks I haven’t followed, and smaller landscapes I simply haven’t noticed yet.
The region may be familiar.
The photographs aren’t.
You Don’t Need a New Destination to Discover Something New
Landscape photography can create the impression that we always need to go somewhere new.
There will always be another national park, mountain, waterfall, or dramatic viewpoint to photograph. I enjoy visiting new places too. But I don’t think discovery depends on traveling somewhere I’ve never been.
Some of the photographs I value most have come from regions I’ve visited many times.
The Olympic Peninsula is a good example. It’s a place I know well, yet it is far too large and varied to ever feel finished photographically. One trip might take me into the mountains. Another might lead into the forest. On another day, I may follow a river or notice a creek while driving through an area I’ve visited before.
Returning to a region doesn’t mean returning for the same photograph.
For me, it’s another chance to explore.
Familiarity Gives Me More Freedom to Explore
There is an advantage to knowing a region.
I don’t feel pressure to photograph its best-known view every time I visit.
At Mount Rainier, the mountain itself doesn’t necessarily need to be my subject. I can turn my attention toward a forest, a river, snow-covered trees, alpine vegetation, or moving water.
The same thing happens elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
Once I stop thinking about what I’m supposed to photograph, I become more receptive to what’s actually around me.
That might be a small waterfall beyond the road. Fog settling into a valley. A stand of trees. Water moving around a group of rocks. Or simply the way light is falling across a landscape at that particular moment.
These aren’t photographs I can plan very well from home.
I have to be there and pay attention.
Not every trip produces a photograph I keep. That’s part of exploring too.
I don’t judge an outing only by how many photographs I bring home. Sometimes I discover a road, creek, trail, or another part of the forest that I want to explore further. Sometimes I simply spend a few hours outside and come home without making anything that becomes part of my finished work.
I’m comfortable with that.
If every outing needed to produce a photograph, exploration would quickly start feeling like an assignment.
Exploring Familiar Ground
The Gifford Pinchot National Forest is one of the regions that best illustrates this for me.
I’ve spent time there since I was young. My family camped there, and my dad loved exploring the forest roads. Those experiences gave me a connection to the region long before photography became such an important part of my life.
Yet knowing the Gifford Pinchot doesn’t mean I’ve exhausted it.
Quite the opposite.
Forest roads branch off in every direction. Valleys lead toward ridges. Creeks disappear into the trees. Weather, elevation, snow, fire, and forest growth continually change what I encounter.
On one photography trip near Mount St. Helens, I headed into the forest without a specific destination. After crossing the Cispus River, I drove up Ryan Lake Road. When the road crossed Quartz Creek, I stopped to look around.
That’s when I noticed a small waterfall upstream.
I hadn’t gone there to photograph that waterfall.
I found it because I stopped and looked. After bushwhacking a short distance upstream, I reached the base of the falls and began working with the scene.
That outing didn’t end at Quartz Creek. I kept exploring. The day eventually included the Green River Valley, the Mount St. Helens landscape, forest near Elk Pass, the rising moon, and the Elk Creek drainage.
I wrote about the full outing in An Afternoon Exploring the Gifford Pinchot Near Mt. St. Helens, Washington.
That’s what keeps me returning to regions like this.
I may know where I am.
I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to find.
The Smaller Landscape Often Becomes the Photograph
Over time, I’ve become increasingly interested in intimate landscapes.
A creek moving through a forest can hold my attention as much as a mountain. Sometimes more.
That’s one reason exploring works so well for me. When I’m not pursuing a predetermined photograph, I can respond to the scale of the landscape in front of me.
I often begin by looking at the larger scene. Then I start narrowing my attention.
What happens if I leave the sky out?
What if the photograph is only about the relationship between water and rock?
What if the most interesting part of the forest is a small group of trees rather than the entire hillside?
The photograph can become simpler as I spend more time looking.
Working in black and white reinforces this way of seeing. As I narrow the frame, I become more aware of relationships between light, form, texture, and tone. A complicated landscape can become surprisingly simple when I stop trying to include everything.
Sometimes the larger landscape helps me understand a place.
The smaller landscape becomes the photograph.
Familiar Doesn’t Mean Finished
One reason I keep photographing the Pacific Northwest is that I don’t feel I’ve finished with it.
I doubt I ever will.
The region is too varied for that. The Cascades, Olympic Peninsula, coastal forests, river valleys, agricultural lands, and volcanic landscapes each contain countless smaller places.
Even areas I’ve traveled through for years continue to surprise me.
That’s different from returning to a particular composition and waiting for another season, different weather, or different light. Many landscape photographers work that way, and it can produce wonderful photographs.
It’s simply not how I usually work.
I’d rather continue down the road and see what’s around the next bend.
Looking through my older work reminds me that this way of photographing isn’t new for me.
In 2013, I camped beside the Lyre River on the Olympic Peninsula. The following morning, I worked with smaller sections of the river and the movement of water through the landscape. That outing became a series of intimate black-and-white photographs.
A Familiar Region Can Still Hold Discovery
Exploration doesn’t always require a distant destination.
Sometimes it means returning to a region you already know and recognizing how much of it you still haven’t seen.
That’s one of the things I value most about photographing the Pacific Northwest. Familiarity hasn’t made these landscapes less interesting to me. Instead, it has shown me how much exists beyond the places I’ve already photographed.
There are always more roads.
More forests.
More rivers and creeks.
More small landscapes tucked inside larger ones.
And sometimes there won’t be a photograph at all.
That’s fine too.
I can return to the same region many times without asking it to give me the same photograph twice.
When I head out with my camera, that’s usually enough of a plan.
Further Explorations
Why I Explore Instead of Scout for Landscape Photographs
Foggy Alpine Landscapes, Mt Rainier National Park, Washington
