How Mastering Landscape Photography came to be

This is the second printing of Mastering Landscape Photography, and for this occasion I wanted to write a new introduction detailing how this book came to be.

The idea for Mastering Landscape Photography came as the result of writing a series of essays for Michael Reichman's website, The Luminous Landscape (www.luminous-landscape.Com).

I have been a columnist for The Luminous Landscape since 1999. Initially, my essays focused on software and equipment, until Michael suggested that I write a series on the aesthetics of landscape photography.

At first, I wasn't sure what aesthetics consisted of exactly in regards to photography. While I did consider photography to be an aesthetic endeavor, I had never reflected upon how the creation of aesthetic photographs played out. I therefore took pen to paper and wrote down a list of topics that I could expand upon to create a series of essays on aesthetics: essays that would focus on exploring each aspect of the creation of a photograph, one at a time.

The list started with the mechanics of operating a camera: exposure, film, and lenses. However, it soon became clear to me that these topics covered only the tools enabling photographers to work towards a goal. This goal was the creation of a photographic aesthetic—an aesthetic which originated outside of the camera. This aesthetic was found not in the camera, but in the landscape and in the photographer's perception of this landscape.

I therefore added "Light" and "Composition" to my list, as well as "Keepers" (the ability to select the strongest photograph among many from a given shoot). I chose these two elements to represent the landscape and the photographer's side. Light is part of the landscape while composition is part of the photographer's aesthetic perception.

I also realized that vision was foremost to aesthetics, because it is the eye of the beholder that defines what is aesthetic; what is considered to be beautiful by a given photographer. It is the eye of the beholder that finds beauty. In other words, beauty is something that is both internal to us (something that we carry within us) and something that is external to us (something that we find in the world around us). I therefore decided that the book would start with a chapter on "Seeing Photographically".

As I wrote this series of essays, a project that took several years, I realized that to truly describe what mastering landscape photography meant, it was necessary to give the reader an insight into my own experience as a professional landscape photographer.

To this end I again added several new essays to my original list. The first essay in this new list focused on explaining how to create a portfolio. The next one focused on learning how to develop a personal style.

But to stop there would have been stopping short of the mark. I wanted to go further, therefore I wrote a narrative of my experience as an artist. This narrative started with the tenth essay in the series, the essay that I entitled "Being an Artist".

I then realized that being an artist and making a living from one's art were two entirely different things. I therefore decided to write another essay that I entitled "Being an Artist in Business".

Finally, I wrote one last essay aimed at helping photographers follow my path and helping them along the way. Entitled "How You Can Do it Too", this is the last chapter in the book and is a fitting ending prior to the conclusion itself.

This long process could not have been completed successfully without Michael Reich man's publishing each of these essays on his website as I completed them. The feedback that I received from readers of Michael's site were tremendously helpful in giving me a feel for how my writings were received by the audience. A writer, just like a photographer and just like any other artist, does not work alone. An artist works for, and with, his or her audience. I am thankful to Michael for helping me find this audience; an audience that has grown over the years and that I continue to reach through Michael's website and through my own website, www.beautiful-landscape.com.

It is my sincere hope that you will join the ranks of this ever-growing audience as we journey together towards mastering landscape photography.

It is also my hope that this book will prove helpful to you along your photographic journey, because this has been my goal from the day that I started writing it.

Alain Briot

Arizona

October 2007

▴ Alain Briot in Antelope Canyon, Arizona.

Photograph by Marcia Gold