This past Saturday, I spent the entire day exploring the Matanuska Glacier with 3 other photographer friends. Arriving before sunrise, we hiked out to the ice in the dim hours of twilight and shot for 7 hours, capturing the broken, blue and white landscape with a diverse variety of compositions and light.
I really enjoyed the camaraderie of our icy photo trek. While it was a lot of fun to get lost in the seemingly endless carnival of picture taking opportunities, I also enjoyed bouncing around and seeing what each of the other shooters was focused on at any given time.
Also, we had another added benefit since that everyone is a photographer, there was noone to get bored of waiting for us to be done.
With four distinct personalities, each of which has a different assortment of equipment, creative ideas and photographs styles, it’s always interesting to see the variations with which different photographers can capture the exact same scene, often times with mere minutes or seconds of each other.
The funny thing is that, even if I’ve made images that I’m really excited about, when I see the work of the other shooter, I often look at a particular photo and think, “wow, awesome- how come I didn’t see/notice that?!”
That’s exactly what I’m talking about- each of us has our own ideas about the subject, and we all respond to different shapes, colors, and relationships in our own personal way. That’s the great thing about photography, and when you shoot with other people, you get to see this in real time.
In my usual type of photography adventures, I’m often the only one with a camera, at least one that’s not a phone or a point and shoot. That’s why I find this kind of exercise so valuable, and so enjoyable. Sometimes I go out with one other shooter, but to spend a whole day with three other photographers in a setting that’s not a workshop type dynamic? I rarely do that, and I had a blast!
To help illustrate what I’m talking about, I’d like to share some of the images the other three people captured out there during our glacier day. Between these three other shooters, one is a full time pro, one is a part time pro and one is a non-pro.
I won’t tell you which one is which, I’ll just show you a brief selection of their work from that day, all of which I really like. I encourage you to check out more of their work, all of them are outstanding photographers.
To David, Jody and Tim, I’d like to say thanks for a great day and for all the inspiration and photography goodness. Can’t wait to do it agains soon!
If you’re interested in attending my upcoming Matanuska Glacier Photography Workshop, April 1-3, 2016, my deadline for signing up is February 1. Click here for more info.
Jody Overstreet
David Ryan Taylor
Tim Escher
