One of the advantages to living in a small and diverse country such as Slovenia is that beautiful landscapes are never far away. As a photographer, I’m always shooting off to capture a beautiful scene. As everything is so close, it often means just a short drive somewhere. 15-30 minutes will easily put me in front of some mountainous scene to capture.
Enter the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown. As a landscape photographer being confined to his own area, this is very frustrating. I can see the mountains from my home, even from the window and balcony, but cannot go to them.
However, thanks to the telephoto lens and Slovenia’s compact size, while I cannot go to the mountains I can bring the mountains to me. As we are also allowed to go out in our immediate area, as long as we avoid gatherings of more than 5 people, it also means I can go out to a nearby field where I can also see the mountains. Slovenia’s small population helps ensure I can easily find a spot well away from any crowds.
The trick, as always in landscape photography, is finding the perfect viewpoint that will give me a clear composition where I can cut out any rooftops, electricity cables and trees from the picture and isolate the mountain or hill I’m trying to capture.
There’s always an upside to having your hands tied like this, it forces you to think harder. At times like this you tend to take a closer look at what is around you. We often look to the horizon for new things and ignore what is close to us. Due to these restrictions I was forced to explore this field in more depth looking for the perfect viewpoint. And I found it.
In this video, I show you how I utilize a telephoto lens with the perfect place to stand to get past all the distracting objects and zoom right up to Smarna Gora and Storzic Mountain and capture their beauty at sunset.
In part one of my video series, seen below, I show you some tips and techniques. In part two, coming soon, the skies cleared and I got some beautiful shots of the Kamnik Alps at sunset, right from this field.
If you’d like a more comprehensive look at Ian’s work check out his free e-book here, or purchase a revised version here. You can also see many images in higher resolution, find other photo posts, sign up for a workshop, and subscribe to his newsletter here, or follow his work on Facebook. If you’d like to see him in action then you can watch his series of videos showing you some tips and tricks to producing better photos, and these can be found on YouTube. More of Ian's work can also be found on TSN, here.
