Full disclosure: I’m not a landscape photographer, I’m a scenery enthusiast. Fulfillment for me is finding an interesting landscape scene, creating an engaging – if sometimes unexpected – composition with it, and processing it in a way that comes closest to expressing the emotion of the scene that originally captivated me. I do happen to use tools of landscape photography to accomplish this, but we needn’t argue over technicalities ;)

The truth is, for a lot of my life I truly believed I had not been blessed with a single creative bone in my body. When I discovered landscape photography I realized the creative energy had been there all along, I just needed to unlock it. Each new landscape – I mean scenery – that I choose to point my camera at reveals a new level of understanding about myself and plays a small role in helping me express my creative voice.

And although I’ve been incredibly fortunate to visit some truly amazing parts of the earth, I never take for granted that some of the most beautiful scenes are often as close as our own backyards. Wherever they happen to be, each scene offers so much more than a static, visual image; it’s an embodiment of a life experience – however fleeting – and is often accompanied by other sensory cues.

This particular image – from an early-morning visit to the rice paddies of Northwest Vietnam a couple years ago – is a great example of that. The luminous rice paddy contrasting with the unlit forest, the juxtaposition of the rich greens with the darker ones, the diagonal angularity from both sides of the scene, and the atmospheric energy conveyed by the fog-tinged hillsides in the background...all of this really spoke to me that morning. But it’s about so much more than the image itself. I can also still smell the subtle sweet and earthy aromas that emanated from the fields of harvest-ready rice crops. And I can still taste the distinctively bold robusta beans in the Vietnamese coffee I’d enjoy a couple hours later in a nearby cafe. And I can even still hear the whirring of the engine and feel the autumn breeze refresh my face as the local kid offered me a ride on the back of his motor bike up a steep hill for a magnificent sunset that evening.

These are indelible memories from my time there: a multi-sensory feast, a multi-cultural immersion, that I can somehow instantly channel when I look back at this image.

Being a #SceneryEnthusiast means pursuing a spirit of mindfulness as you soak in new experiences. It means “giving yourself a minute” to truly absorb the sights of course, but also the smells, the sounds, maybe even the tastes and textures, unencumbered by camera gear and settings. And in a broader sense it means taking charge of what fulfillment in life looks and feels like to you, recognizing that this is often a moving target as you give yourself permission to be challenged, inspired, and shaped by new experiences and the creative work of others.

Candidly, although my passion for landscape photography and founding of a canvas printing business started as distinctly personal pursuits, the energy I derive from others is profound. That energy can be found in the emotion-filled faces of medical center staff whenever I’m delivering a collection of my prints to adorn their clinic walls. That the scenery that initially inspired me to make an image can also serve as a source of comfort and hope to patients during a real time of need is both humbling and validating. Even in my work as a consultant in which Teams & Zoom meetings are a routine forum, my guilty pleasure is to swap out my background images as often as once or twice a day, and I never miss an opportunity to share the story behind the image for clients and partners who’ve come to understand (tolerate?) my penchant for starting meetings this way! Alas, Scenery Enthusiasm is often a team sport.

Are you a Scenery Enthusiast? If so, how do scenes and experiences move you? If not, you’re likely an enthusiast of several other things. What are they, and how do they move you?

Hi, my name’s Jeff, and I'm a #SceneryEnthusiast