Laanscapes

Slowlight.

A fresh start. How I have been looking forward to this. For longer than 4 years, I’ve felt the winds of change blowing through the air.

Back when I first fell in love with landscape photography, the nostalgic urge to move back to simpler times became stronger. Especially with the rise of AI and bots, websites that became more riddled with ads and warnings, and just how different the world feels right now, it is more important to me that we have mental breathing room in our lives. I think both photography and reading fulfill that service.

This new website is different in several ways. Most importantly, the reason for being here.

My approach to photography has gone through many changes over the last 20 years or so. It’s natural for painters, writers and musicians to express the work differently over time. Sometimes quite drastically and suddenly. So photographers too can shift their attention in ways that can change the results.

The work changed.

I feel the body of work is now sufficient enough to notice that there was an evolution that started around 2020. That’s why I present to you a new gallery to showcase the work that actually defines my creative vision as of today. The contents of that gallery are ever changing to reflect my personality, but I’ve come up with a word to describe this Period in my life as I was flipping through the images of the last 4-5 years: Slowlight. It perfectly encapsulates what I do and the way I do it, but I didn’t want to change the name of the website.

The goal of this website is to have a communal platform for those who share the need for authenticity, silence and love for the landscape, where making art comes before the tools, and even the locations we find ourselves in.

Workshops?

That already meant that workshops with me were very different from most. Most significantly, it’s about the mindset rather than bucket list. To some, this was very difficult to understand. Why would you go to Iceland if you point the camera straight down to a frozen puddle, a windswept area of sand or a “mud crack” to quote Kai Hornung. He’ll laugh when he reads this. If I ever lead a workshop again, I want you to expect intimate and abstract landscape photography and a change in thinking instead of a tour around the country.

I’ve divided the previous blog into two, shifting the focus from explaining the work and the tools to increasingly communicate this philosophy of mindful seeing.

About the newsletter…

Zen Habits, one of my favorite websites of all time, is perhaps the closest to where I see the newsletter going, with words describing it: Conceptual, Nature first, Philosophy, Mindfulness and even Mental Well-being. Inspiration comes from self-help books I read, Thought provoking YouTube channels I’m subscribed to, walks without the camera, the Waking up app, eastern philosophy and interpreting art.

Teaching the basics of landscape photography, advanced editing and all the gear and location trophy hunting… even the work that was the driving force for that, isn’t gone. It has been archived to still allow freedom for both of us to move around in that headspace when we feel like it. What’s important is that the stuff is taking a back seat.

Communicating design.

The design is based on this new philosophy too.

• The cool color palette reflects my tendency for both subject, time-of-day, weather and creative choices in post-processing. More than 75% of my work is expressed in a cool white-balance because it fits the subject matter of ice, snow, twilight or night. It’s understood in color theory that blues evoke a sense of calm too, while more metaphysical analysis suggest that blues work to enhance our creativity. It’s the reason my studio has blues on the wall too. This ties the digital gallery nicely together with the physical space my work was written and developed in.

• The serif typography is intentionally looking classic, with ample white space and low contrast - contrary to popular design trends, the choice is deliberately made to underline the nostalgia for simpler times.

• While there will be minor changes in the design the coming months, the functionality-blocking overhaul is now done. This is why my website went offline for a few days.

So in summary, the nature of my work, but also the way I view the world has changed over the course of my career as a photographer, and this website is supposed to communicate my authentic self. If you’d like to know more about who I am and what I stand for, then I invite you over to read my fresh about page.