I see an awful lot of articles about landscape photography and they usually have one thing in common: Camera Gear.  You need this lens and that filter and don't you dare leave the house without a tripod.  

I get it.

We all get it.  

The funny thing is, you can do landscape photography with whatever camera you've got lying around. You don't need every piece of gear on the wish list to take a landscape photo. Some of my favourite work has been produced on an entry level DSLR, a kit lens and the last $20.00 to my name thrown into the gas tank.  If you're willing to put the effort in, you can make a photo work with whatever gear you have.  So I'm going to put the gear wish list aside (oh, and it's a beautiful shiny list isn't it?) and put together a practical list to help you on your next landscape photo outing. 

Vik

Leave a Note

This is rule number one around our house - if you`re going out into the wilderness or even just for a drive somewhere, leave a note. It takes five seconds to let someone know where you're going.  Even when I only have a vague idea of what my shoot will entail, I leave a note for my husband telling where I’m planning on going, what my plan B might look like, a reminder of what my licence plate is and a time for him to start panicking and assuming the worst. It's a big country we live in, so it's good to narrow down the space for people to start looking for you. And before you argue with me "But Lisa, give me a break, I have a phone on me at all times"  I will gently remind you that cell phones don't always work in this big country of ours and even if they do, sometimes the holder of the cell phone drops it into a lake rendering it useless . Stranger things have happened.

This is what "Welp.... I'm screwed" looks like.

If you think leaving a note is kid stuff my recommended reading to you is Aron Ralston’s “172 Hours” (Or you can watch the movie if that’s more your speed) Not only will it beat you over the head with a very valuable lesson about letting people know where you're going (kind of like what I'm doing now, except nobody is going to pay me to let James Franco act out this blog post), it's actually a pretty great book/movie.  Spoiler alert: Aron didn't leave a note and bad things happened to him. Very bad things. He could have died because he didn't leave a note.  I don't want bad things to happen to you, so remember to tell someone what your plans are. 

I promise I won't be quite so stern with tomorrow's post.