I have always felt that landscape photographers get more out of life because they are so much more observant than average tourists. When we go to a promising location, we scan the area for possible compositions in a way that most smartphone photographers or tourists don’t. We see the landscape as a series of textures, shapes and colours, not just as hills, fields and sky. We want to capture the essence of the place, not just the view from the roadside.
However, there is another argument. Photographers can miss the magic moments in front of them because they are so busy fiddling with the dials and menus on their cameras that they don’t see the beauty of the developing sunset until it is nearly over. Sometimes the rush to get the correct filtration in place in a fast-moving situation means that we don’t see the beauty that was in front of us, until we look at the pictures later. Photographers are sometimes advised to put down their cameras occasionally and just enjoy the scene in front of them. The idea is that you will...
