“The photograph begins long before the shutter is pressed. It begins the moment we stop looking for subjects and start seeing relationships.”
For many years, I believed photography was about finding interesting subjects.
If someone had asked what I enjoyed photographing, I would have answered with a familiar list: mountains, waterfalls, old barns, winding roads, weathered fences, and the occasional solitary tree standing beneath an expansive sky. Like many photographers, I assumed the quality of my work depended largely on the quality of the places I could find. If I could stand before something extraordinary, surely an extraordinary photograph would follow.
There was some truth in that belief. It encouraged me to explore, to rise before dawn, and to wander through landscapes that stirred my imagination. Those experiences shaped me as a photographer, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Yet, as the years passed, I noticed something I couldn’t explain. Some photographs made in spectacular places left me strangely unmoved, while others, created in the most ordinary settings, stayed with me long after I had packed away the camera.
The camera had faithfully recorded every detail, but it had not always recorded the experience. Eventually, I began to suspect that I had been asking the wrong question. Each time I arrived somewhere new, I found myself wondering, What should I photograph? It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, but it quietly encouraged me to think of the landscape as a collection of separate objects waiting to be arranged inside a frame.
The longer I photograph, the more convinced I become that nature doesn’t work that way.
One of the ideas that has gradually reshaped my way of seeing comes from the Lakota expression Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ—”All My Relations.” It is often understood as a reminder that all life is connected, but I have come to believe it also describes the landscapes we photograph. Nothing stands alone. A tree owes its shape to years of prevailing wind. Its roots follow unseen water beneath the prairie. Birds find shelter among its branches. Passing storms, changing seasons, and shifting light continually redefine its character. Even the photographer standing quietly nearby becomes part of the relationship simply by choosing to be present.
Once that thought settled into my mind, it became difficult to look at a landscape the way I once had. I realized I wasn’t really interested in photographing a tree, a stream, or a distant ridge. What held my attention was the conversation taking place among them. The tree mattered because of the light that reached it, the weather that surrounded it, the grasses moving at its feet, and the memories the scene awakened within me. The subject had not disappeared, but it no longer stood alone.
I remember standing before a solitary tree one morning in September. At first, it seemed almost too ordinary to deserve a photograph. Had I been driving, I might never have stopped. But something encouraged me to remain where I was instead of reaching immediately for my camera. As the minutes passed, I noticed the wind moving through the tall grass before it reached the leaves. Passing storm clouds moved behind the tree, alternately revealing and concealing the distant horizon. The first sunlight caught one side of the trunk while the opposite side remained cool and quiet. Somewhere beyond the field, meadowlarks announced the beginning of the day. None of those things demanded attention by themselves, but together they created an experience that felt complete.
The longer I stood there, the more I realized I wasn’t really looking at a tree. I was witnessing a relationship.
If the wind had been absent, the scene would have felt different. If the clouds had already passed, the light would have told another story. Had I arrived an hour later, it would have become an entirely different morning. Even my own memories influenced what I found meaningful. The photograph was never waiting inside the tree itself. It existed within the relationships that surrounded it.
Looking back, I think this is where many photographers unknowingly reach a plateau. We become skilled at recognizing subjects, yet overlook the relationships that give those subjects meaning. We travel farther in search of dramatic scenery, invest in better equipment, and refine our technical skills, believing the next improvement will come from something we can acquire. Those things certainly matter, but none of them can teach us to pay attention. Attention grows slowly. It is cultivated through patience, curiosity, and a willingness to remain with a scene long after our first impression has passed.
That realization has quietly changed the way I compose a photograph. I still think about balance, rhythm, and light, but they no longer feel like isolated techniques. Composition has become less about arranging objects within a frame and more about revealing relationships that already exist. Light no longer simply illuminates a subject; it reveals how every element depends upon every other. Empty space becomes a place where the eye can rest before continuing its journey. Contrast is no longer just a technical adjustment. It becomes a way of strengthening one relationship while allowing another to recede into silence.
Perhaps this is why two photographers can stand shoulder to shoulder, using identical cameras and photographing the same landscape, yet return home with entirely different images. They are not simply making different compositional choices. They are noticing different relationships. One may be drawn to the conversation between light and stone. Another may see the quiet tension between approaching weather and a solitary tree. Neither photograph is more truthful than the other. Each reveals what its maker considered worthy of attention.
These days, when I arrive somewhere with my camera, I try to begin with a different question.
Not What should I photograph?
Instead, I ask, If everything here is connected, what relationship is asking to be seen?
Sometimes the answer comes quickly. More often, it arrives only after I have stood quietly for several minutes, watching the light change, listening to the sounds around me, and allowing my expectations to fade into the background. Those moments have become some of the most meaningful parts of photography. Even on the days when I return home without making a single exposure, I rarely feel that my time has been wasted. Learning to notice is never wasted.
I still photograph mountains, old barns, winding roads, and solitary trees. Those subjects have changed very little over the years. What has changed is the way I hope to see them. I am less interested now in the object standing before my lens than in the countless relationships that allow it to exist—the light that reveals it, the weather that shapes it, the passage of time that transforms it, and the memories it awakens within me.
If Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ teaches that everything is connected, then perhaps the photographer’s task is not simply to record what stands before the camera. Perhaps our task is to reveal those connections in a way that allows others to see them as well.
The longer I practice photography, the more I believe that is what every meaningful photograph attempts to do.
Not simply to show us what was there.
But to remind us that nothing, and no one, truly stands alone.
