Listening

To me, there is a strong link between listening to music, or being involved in music (which requires active listening), and landscape photography. 

Death Valley, November 2016
I had been thinking of my upcoming photo trip, and how I prepare for it. I don't just take out the maps, or book the hotel, or think of the places I want to go to photograph. There is another and deeper level of preparation that sometimes takes a little time, but it enables and enhances the creative process. 

It's the process of listening. 

I love road trips that take me hours or days away from the stress of work or family life. I find that those hours allow me to decompress from those stresses, which then allows me to listen to what is around me as I photograph. I cannot explain my process, or what catches my eye and why it catches my eye. But when I've fully engaged as an active listener in nature, it becomes a 100% commitment. And it isn't just listening with my ears: it's completely involves my sense of smell, my sense of hearing, and my sense of sight. I look down - a lot - because I find that in the detail there can be a natural composition that leads my eye to it. I frame it in my mind, long before the camera is set up. And just like a piece of music I sing, all the years of listening and developing my eye to see, is just like the years of singing and rehearsals that prepare me to sing to my best artistic ability. 

Death Valley, November 2016
For years I lived alone, and for a part of that time I worked at 2nd shift, getting home at 1 AM. Often, I was still too awake to go to sleep, so I'd select something to listen to within my collection of CD's, pour myself a Scotch, dim the lights and put on my headphones. And I would listen. I would let the music envelope me. And it was in those hours of listening that I believe I also learned the art of listening in nature.

Listening in nature requires that focus, that concentration. But more than that, it requires that you become open to what is around you. You hear the birds, or the elk bugling, or the sound of the stream as it courses its way over rocks and tree roots. And it is in that process of listening that I find my soul stirred and I find the creative muse that guides me to capture the images - the moments of natural music - that I do.

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