What is it that makes a “landscape?”

Or more directly, what shapes one’s own personal place or places? Ones you’d choose to photograph?

And how do you find those base elements? Or do they find you?

When I close my eyes and think “Sierra,” I don’t see Yosemite, at least not Half Dome. Instead, I might see a stream that’s sparkling in the early-morning sun…or maybe a dusky aspen grove with leopard lilies…or a rocky field of glacial erratics casting evening shadows…or some frosted, windblown fall grasses. It’s often the quiet things for me—at least on that gentler western slope.

And then there’s the lasting “memory” of waking one morning at Blue Lakes in the northern Sierra, looking out from my sleeping bag past the open tailgate of my truck, and seeing a line of early-morning lodgepole pine shapes and colors—which then lodged themselves inside me for good. This was a long time ago. Nothing I know of prompted it. I’ve looked at that same spot since and did not see what I saw the first time, but I still have that picture in my mind. It’s not a thought—instead, it’s an exact image and the feeling it gave me. Those trees and that light are now part of my own inner landscape.

I have this strange thought that the swirls of words and images that come to me are not really contradictory—I just need to find the connections. And it’s a leap of faith. As the painter Alfred Gottlieb once said: “My favorite symbols were those which I didn’t understand.” Though I wouldn’t really call these symbols—maybe they’re more like “landscapes of the mind.”

So, what shapes what? You’re not actively looking, but somehow this thing found you to begin with, and now you’d know it when you see it. Something calls. Is it a memory, a dream, the light, or the thing it shines upon? Or is it the finger that presses the shutter? Inside or outside? Either way, when you hear that song, that’s your place. Your best images may seem surprising, and unexpected, but then almost inevitable, too. We can talk cameras and f-stops and framing all day long, and maybe that’s the grammar we need to speak…but that’s not it.

Suppose you made a portfolio of, say, twelve images to paint that interior place. What would you want to show someone? It might be a tough task to pick them out because, really, the seeds of each of those images are in all the others, too, big and small. You’re building your own landscape, rock by rock, lake by stream. Weaving in the flora and fauna of your own story. Finding your way by hunch and by feel. And maybe the wilderness within is somehow tuned to the one outside. If so, I guess that word “finding” is wrong—you’re just reconnecting.

I’m still looking for those lodgepoles. In my mind, it’s a clear, summery Sierra morning, and a warm, side-lit glow from the rising sun paints their telltale textures that guidebooks call “oatmeal” or “sandpaper.” They have strong but gently curving trunks. A lake peeks through the spacings. They’re a puzzle…and a promise. I haven’t really found them yet.

How can something as simple as the first light on some trees say everything about everything?

By Scott Atkinson

Light on Lodgepoles

Simple Things

Reflections