Hi everyone. I would like some advice :) I come from a background in fashion/editorial photography and I’m satisfied with my works in this field, but recently I started taking my camera with me during my hikes and I’m never happy with the photos I bring home. They always have something “off”: I find them almost amatorial, sometimes plain. How can I improve? Can someone advise me some good resources to learn about this topic? Thanks!
They say that the camera adds ten pounds and ten years to the subject. Also consider the phenomenon of “Hollywood ugly”: a typical good looking person before the camera often appears to be average or worse (that’s one of the reasons why I prefer being behind the camera). Fashion photographers put a lot of effort into making their subjects look perfect, and there are good, solid reasons why that should be so. A photograph is flat, lifeless, and typically small, and most everything about a person that makes them lively, charming, personable, and exciting is missing from a photo, or at least difficult to capture effectively; but we do see flaws.
It’s likewise for a landscape photo: an ordinary interesting scene will look flat and dull in a photo. It takes a truly epic landscape in real life to make an interesting landscape photo. Flaws totally overlooked in real life become apparent in a landscape: power lines, trash, parked cars may end up being seen for the first time in the photo.