keep your sense of scale (2023) (Patreon)

Look, there's not a whole lot of novel shots you can take in Zion National Park, and so when I was visiting for that Subaru Crosstrek trip a few months back, I didn't even really try to take any. I mostly just soaked it in and got the shots of the car I would need for my stories, and left it at that. I took one shot of the landscape, this one right here, and I was overall like "eh, whatever" with it... until I looked closer today and saw the bottom-right edge of the image.

That's the main park road and cars! With that, the picture gains a sense of scale, and it feels vastly more interesting. This was an oversight, but it's honestly a happy one, because this is something I need to keep in mind more often when trying to shoot "landscapes". I have this Ansel-Adams-like urge to take "pure" landscapes sometimes, with nothing man-made in them, even though generally the presence of the man-made is what makes my photos interesting. (The van-print-series should be proof of this for me!)

Unrelated to any of this, but I've got a new story on how to publish a photo book out at DPReview!