It’s the middle of Summer, my Instagram feed is full of epic trips and locations, photographers showing me a myriad of wonderful places that I could be shooting. As a photographer, the pressure to visit these honeypot locations is palpable.
Then I check my bank balance, look at Sofia on her Summer break and realise that for me and likely a lot of other photographers, these epic locations are beyond our reach, our budget and our time constraints.
In all honesty, I no longer feel the pull of these Instagram worthy locations. I feel that they’re overdone, overshot and overcrowded. By staying close to home, I gain something that no amount of travel can give me: familiarity, repeatability, and consistency.
I’m fortunate that I’ve travelled quite a lot in my life and perhaps that is partly why I get a much warmer, more comfortable feeling from staying near to home. Perhaps that’s why I appreciate the Scottish countryside so much and find beauty everywhere I look here.
Even if you haven’t travelled much, I’d still argue that some of the best photos that you could make are sat waiting, right on your doorstep. Maybe it’s a local park, woodland or river, perhaps it’s the daily goings on in your particular street, the development in your local town. Whatever it is, the fact that you can access it repeatedly gives you a huge advantage and a perspective that no visitor to your area will ever be able to recreate. It’s unique to you and your location and it gives you the opportunity to make photos that say something about a place, over time—something that can’t be captured from a week’s ‘epic trip’ and some one-off ‘banger’ shots.
But Summertime is a bad time of year for photography, isn’t it?
I tend to agree that Summertime doesn’t always offer the best light. A lot of the day consists of harsh, direct sun that can create high-contrast or washed-out scenes. Sunrises are early and sunsets, particularly here in Scotland, are well beyond my bedtime. But that doesn’t mean we should skip it altogether.
There are some simple ways to still get out and make photos, even in summer. Basic ideas such as trying to photograph in the shade, doing macro photography, or focusing on small details are often heard for good reason—they allow you to work within a small area where the light isn’t at its harshest. You could take up photographing birds and wildlife as they’re busy fattening themselves and their offspring up to prepare for winter.
However, all of these suggestions require a change in subject matter which you may not wish to pursue.
For me, I’m not going to suddenly become obsessed with macro photography for one season; it doesn’t evolve my photography and the work doesn’t fit with the projects I’m working on. Instead, I find ways to incorporate the harsh light of summer into my photos, using the various tools we have as photographers to make the light and the scene work. If you can master the techniques we practise all year round and combine them with a mindset of just getting out and shooting, there are still great photos to be made, whatever the season and whatever the light.
I talk more about my process for creating photos with atmosphere in any light over on my personal site—you can read the full breakdown in The Architecture of Atmosphere: How I Construct an Image.