How often can you travel to an exotic location to do landscape photography?

Unless you live in a country well known as a landscape photography destination, such as Iceland or Norway, there might not be so many exotic and epic landscapes around you. Even in those countries sometimes you need to travel long distances to get to a great location. It is all depends on where you live, right? Well, if you are not lucky enough to be based on such a great location, you are not alone. Most of us as hobbyist landscape photographers don't have that luxury. So what can we do? Also, unless you are a professional photographer, you most likely don't have too much extra time to go on a road trip or fly to a good location. For those of us who has family with small children, that means even less free time. Yes. I'm talking from experience. So here we deal with a deep craving for going out when the weather is great, but that happens most of the time when either we are at our day job or with our families doing grocery shopping.

When you have limited time to take landscape photos, and you want to take the best images possible, you will face some frustrations. At least I had experienced that. So, what to do?

How on earth, someone with a day job and family can spend any time on a demanding hobby such as Landscape photography? Well, my answer is to know your local area. You may already figured it out for yourself, based on your lifestyle. It all comes down to your lifestyle and type of job you have and how much your family needs you to be around. I only can tell you what I have done so far and I am gonna do from now on.

During the first few years after my son's been born, I had to put this hobby in slow cooking mode. Meaning I barely had time to go out and practice, leave alone travelling and photography trips. After 3 years I had one overnight trip to one of the islands of Stockholm’s archipelagoes. That wasn't the most exciting place in the world, but for me it was the most satisfying thing I have done in a long time.

Not the best image in the world, but it was the best experience I had in a long time.

So, all these years, I had to practice photography in my local area, which is by the way, not super photogenic, but it is not bad either. Where I live, the landscape mostly made of lakes, spruce forests (very chaotic ones) and farms, no mountains or waterfalls.

Soft touch

With the help of the good light, and some editing techniques, it is possible to make a good image everywhere.

Mirror lake

The good news is you can get amazing skies and nice conditions where ever you live.

Closest grand landscape is the east coast of Sweden, which is one and half hour drive away. So if you, like me, only have 2 hours for a quick photo shoot, that is out of options.

I may sound miserable, but the reality is all of these limitations, forced me to learn photography and composition, and I believe it made me a better photographer as if I had easy access to a grand vista or an iconic landscape. Maybe not growing as fast as I wished though.

What I have done so far, is I go out in closest location, it may be a lake or a forest on my way to go to my son's daycare or even the city botanical garden. Or even a grassland behind the house, and just practice and practice. But not blind practice, though. You need to learn composition and techniques too. So more than the amount of time I spend outside, I spend on YouTube, e-books, online courses and any other learning sources. I've developed my eyes as photographer by looking at others art works analyze them, and then practice in what ever landscape I had access to. For instance, since I had no chance to go to the mountains or other big vistas to practice with my wide angle lens, I used the same techniques in a farm or at a riverbank, putting a rock or a flower as my foreground and some trees or a forest as the background and learn what works and what doesn't. This, for sure, takes a lot of time so be patient.

practice with my wide angle lens

Using leading lines and practicing with colors and forms.
This image taught me a lot

I have practiced and learned when and how to use the sky to benefit my photos and of course there has been a LOT of failed images.

Amazing cloud formation. Without this sky the image would have been very boring and imbalanced.

But even with all of this not satisfying results, I have been satisfied with the progress I have made. I see how my images are getting better and better, and now I know when to not take a picture too (Well, I am still working on it). Nevertheless, the best advice for someone like me, in a similar situation, could be to bring your camera with you everywhere you go and practice. Once I heard this from a photographer, who never gone to work without his camera. And that was one of the best advice I have ever heard. And the best part is you will get some great photos eventually along the way. That, I can guarantee.

The other benefit of practicing on your local landscape is, you will find places that are great for taking pictures and when the conditions are good, you are the only one who knows about these secret gems.

Have you ever experienced the same frustration? let me know in the comments, how you solve this and what is your approach.