The importance of slowing down.

There is always a lot of talk about slowing down in photography. Especially landscape photography. There is good reason for that. If you don’t slow down, you are bound to miss something or are more likely to make mistakes. This is precisely what happened to me on my last outing. I was at The Devil’s Hopyard State Park in Connecticut. There was still a tiny amount of snow on the ground, and it had been raining the day before, so the river was in full force that day. I was excited. I grabbed my gear and was off. I had my camera out of the bag less than 100 yards down the trail, shooting everything that caught my eye.

You might think, “That’s amazing! How great that must have been,” and it should have been. But I was rushing everything. I wanted to capture all the images, and I was flitting about from log to tree to river bank like a busy bee looking for nectar. The problem was I wasn’t being careful with my images. I was rushing everything so I could move on to the next thing. I could not slow down. The problem is that while I may have taken many pictures, I did not create many images worth keeping. In my haste, I missed out on capturing the true essence of the landscape. I didn’t even take the time to truly appreciate what I was looking at and where I was. 

This is why it is vital to slow down. Not only to prevent mistakes or to ensure a “good composition,” but the most important reason to slow down is to appreciate the environment surrounding you. This appreciation will not just dictate the image you create, but it will infuse it with the emotions and story of the place. This connection with your surroundings is what the story, the feeling, and the emotion in your image are about. These things can not be rushed. A good story takes time to tell.

 While I managed a few good images, I couldn’t help but feel that if I had taken more time and care to slow down, I would have come home with some great images and a few more stories to go with them.