In my photography, I aim to convey the impressions and emotions I experience in nature. Along the way, I have found myself drawn to the extreme ends of photographic techniques, be that ultra-wide or super-telephoto, blackout or whiteout, long shutter speeds, or unconventional compositions. At the extremities, the distractions fall away, the important elements are enhanced, and the story within the image grows stronger.
Photography is about seeking order in a chaotic world. Nature often appears as a random and overwhelming collection of elements — trees crowding a forest, animals moving in herds, or the countless feathers of a bird’s plumage. As photographers, we uncover the hidden structures and patterns within this apparent chaos and translate them into visual form. It may sound like an easy job, but to do it well is very difficult. Presenting nature’s chaos in a visually pleasing image has led me to seek the extreme ends of photographic techniques. In this way, I can tell a stronger story with my image — a story that conveys my emotions and experiences to the viewer.
Atmosphere Is Everything
In nature, our experience and perceptions are shaped by many factors. All of our senses work together, complementing one another to create a complete impression of the scene. The smells, textures, and sounds can be just as important as the visuals. Capturing this full experience is inherently challenging for still photographers. We can only work with vision to recreate the entire scene for our viewers. After a fantastic encounter in nature, it is common to feel underwhelmed by your own pictures, as they rarely evoke the same intensity of emotion we felt in the field, with the full spectrum of sensory input. I’m sure you know the feeling.
To recreate and immortalize atmospheres and emotions in nature, I like to work with the extreme ends of the exposure. Dark, moody images with a heavy underexposure, or bright and airy images achieved through overexposure. These techniques are commonly known as blackout or whiteout and are powerful ways to enhance and emphasize the experience.
The brightness of the exposure has a big impact on the expression in the image. Dark scenes tend to feel dramatic, and a blackout exposure can emphasize mystery and atmosphere. Bright images often feel pure and elegant, making the whiteout technique perfect for highlighting those qualities, either in the species itself or its surroundings. Exposure is more than a technical decision; it becomes a language for emotion. By consciously choosing how light or dark to render a scene, you’re guiding the viewer toward the emotions you experienced in the field.
Playing with Perspective
Just as exposure shapes the atmosphere, perspective defines how we relate to the subject itself. In a photographer’s toolkit, focal length is one of the best ways to change the appearance of the subject in relation to its habitat. Each end of the spectrum, from wide-angle to super-telephoto, tells a different story. The further you move away from standard focal lengths, the stronger the effect becomes. This can be used to reinforce the story you want to convey in your image.
Technological developments in recent years have expanded the possibilities available to photographers, especially when it comes to extra-long focal lengths. With mirrorless technology, telephoto lenses have become better, cheaper, and more accessible. Perhaps most importantly, even inexpensive telezoom lenses can now be used with teleconverters while maintaining usable autofocus and good image quality. To work with such extreme focal lengths has opened a new world of perspectives for me.
Extreme focal lengths can be effective in a single image, but they become particularly powerful when both ends of the spectrum are used to tell a story through a portfolio of images. On the seabird island of Hornøya in Norway, a population of European shags breeds. Located above the Arctic Circle, the island is still covered in snow as the birds return for the breeding season. The conditions are harsh, and the light is beautiful, as the shags establish territories, display, and battle the snowstorms. Using focal lengths ranging from 24 to 1200 mm, I worked to paint a picture of their story, covering both environmental shots, detailed close-ups, and creative perspectives.
The Magic of Movement
At its core, photography is about capturing moments and preserving movements that tell a story. Working with shutter speeds that create images our own eyes are incapable of seeing is especially appealing to me.
Long exposures, especially in combination with Intentional Camera Movement (ICM), open up a new world of photographic possibilities. We are no longer limited to capturing the landscape, colors, and shapes surrounding the subject — we can paint the image with structures from the entire landscape, all within a single exposure. With long exposures and a unique camera movement for each photo, ICM images become one-of-a-kind and impossible to recreate. The result is also a large number of failed images, so it’s a technique that requires patience and time to learn. I’m still at the beginning of that process myself.
Mirrorless camera technology has allowed us to use shutter speeds that were previously out of reach. In the DSLR era, the limit was 1/8000 sec, and very bright scenes couldn’t be photographed without blowing out the highlights. Now, we can use shutter speeds up to several ten-thousandths of a second. This can be very useful when shooting in extremely bright conditions, such as directly towards the sun at midday. Our eyes can’t see the details in such bright scenes, but the camera can capture an intriguing image, revealing details of both the sun and the backlit clouds.
Unconventional Compositions
Composition in photography has very clear rules — and for a good reason. Placing your subject according to the golden ratio often results in a balanced, well-composed image. But no rule is absolute. Sticking rigidly to guidelines can end up restricting creativity.
Composition is all about balance. A classic example is to leave space in the direction the subject is facing. But if you always follow that rule, you might miss out on more interesting images, ones where another element creates balance even if the subject is off-center. For me, composition has become less about strict rules and more about how the elements within the frame interact. In some cases, an unconventional composition can make an image far more powerful. Training your eye to see how the elements in a scene interact is, in my opinion, one of the most important ways to elevate your photography.
Creativity for Creativity’s Sake
A common norm in photography is to photograph with intention. Every choice you make, from composition to shutter speed, should be made with a clear purpose. And in many cases, this is a good rule to follow. Such rules create consistent results, balanced exposures, and predictable outcomes. This sounds like exactly what we need in our work to create order among chaos. But it may also limit our creativity.
Being creative just for the sake of creativity, without a purpose or a particular vision, is just as important in my opinion. It is a counterbalance to the systematic approach, which discourages playfulness. Not every photograph can be pre-visualized; our eyes and mind cannot predict coincidences and random occurrences such as reflections and movement. But this is exactly what can add the missing piece of magic to an image.
To me, nature photography is all about exploring and experimenting. Perhaps a photo of a static subject can improve if I move the camera – or why not underexpose when others would overexpose? With this approach, I end up with plenty of bad shots, I’ll admit. But among all the throwaways, gold can emerge. Sometimes in the form of a spectacular image, but more often as a discovery of an effect I can develop further in my photography.
Final Remarks
When I look at the work of other photographers, I am most captivated by images that leave me questioning how they were made. Images created by photographers who dare to ignore the rules, use techniques nobody else has thought of, and explore how the natural world and our cameras interact. Whether using long shutter speeds, extreme focal lengths, or creative compositions, the source for capturing unique and creative images is playfulness, experimentation, and a great interest in the natural world. In my opinion, curiosity is the greatest creative tool for nature photographers.
