Stephen Bay's Photography Blog

What I Learned From Painters as a Landscape Photographer

Although I am a photographer, I think it’s important to study the work of other visual artists especially those in different mediums. Painters, illustrators, graphic designers, collage, and other 2d artists often approach their work with a different mindset and I feel there is much that photographers can learn from them. In a painting, nothing is accidental and everything was the result of a conscious decision. Thus if you see a particular color treatment or composition you know that was because the painter deliberately decided to make it so.

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Why Epic Sunsets Are Bad for Landscape Photography

When I first started focusing on landscapes (I shifted from travel photography) I was always chasing the light and seeking that epic sunrise or sunset. If I didn’t get a fantastic color burn, I said to myself, I’ll come back and keep coming back until I get it. I thought if I had a great foreground adding an epic sky would make the image even better (literally my logic was it had to be double plus good).

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The Best Way to Improve Your Photography: Have a Vision

Beginning photographers often ask me how best to improve their work. I have a bit of a reputation for doing technical images that require a lot of Photoshop, so I think they expect me to say something about mastering post-processing and how that can take an average photo to the next level. But while post-processing is necessary, it is not the most important thing in my opinion. Other photographers know that I often spend a lot of time planning out my shoots.

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My Photography Goals for 2020

Creative Goals I’m going to move away from stamp collecting. In the past, I treated landscape (and travel) photography like stamp collecting. I had a list of locations and I wanted to make sure I had at least one photo from each spot. Once I got my shot, I moved on to the next one in my list. When I first moved to San Diego, this served me well as I had no images and didn’t know the area very well.

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My Creative Process for Landscape Photography

I live in San Diego and making local landscape images has been my focus for the past several years. When I started, other photographers told me that it would be an uphill battle, that everything has already been shot before, and it’s going to be next to impossible to standout. I was told that I would struggle to find my own unique pictures. At first I was discouraged and I found it hard to argue with this viewpoint.

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