The art of ‘standing behind’

I have a theory  about how we improve as landscape photographers. It goes like this…

One of my other passions is fly fishing for trout, and the way that I learned when very young was by observation of others, asking questions and, once i had seen my mentors catch fish, i would ‘stand behind’ them and emulate what they had done with the knowledge of the fly, conditions, stance, casting technique etc in order to replicate the winning scene.

My approach to photography was very similar, in my teens I ‘stood behind’ my good friend and excellent photojournalist, David Gordon, and learned the basic skills of composition,  and acquiring an ‘eye’ for the shot… and when I moved from a point and shoot to a seriously heavier camera, and got out into the landscape, I noticed a strange phenomena, when, at Buachaille Etive Mor, I was perched in the water, as usual, and watched a group of  photographers form an orderly queue behind a very cool and assured figure who had taken the first shot. Now, I am not criticising this, because, when I thought about it, it is something i have  done, often subconsciously, on many occasions, when I realised that the snapper in front appeared more assured, and had obviously seen something in the composition that I had not.

This image is an example of that, the chap on the left of the image is Jon Gibbs, and I met him on my first visit to this part of Loch Tulla. I could tell by his demenour, confidence and calm excitement, in the face of a beautiful scene in front of him, that he was someone to ‘stand behind’… His resultant shot of Loch Tulla is testimony to that theory, and I have returned to this spot on several occasions since.

I have been taking landscape photographs now for four years, and have ‘stood behind’… beside, and sometimes annoyingly, in front of, some great photographers … but on a couple of occasions recently I have discovered that the greatest accolade, and the warmest glow internally was…when faced with millions of acres of desolate moorland and mountain…  someone ‘stood behind ‘ me!